‘Mother! dear mother!’ cried Hermione, ‘don’t go on—I can’t bear it. We have been wicked, selfish girls not to have seen it before. I thought you and father had been looking out of spirits lately. I see now how it was telling on you. We’ll go, Vanda, wherever we are told. It’s a shame that we should have had to be asked. Only we must have a family council before the place—the manor, the castle, or whatever it is to be—is finally decided upon. It can’t be so very dreadful after all.’
‘Dreadful!’ cried Vanda; ‘it’s delicious. I’ll undertake the dairy—and we must have lots of lovely tiles, and such cream-pans, and a floor like glass, and walls that can be washed down twice a day. The next thing is to find the Castle of Otranto. Will there be ruins, ghosts, and a helmet to fall down with a crash? I must have vaults, too, and a secret passage, where the former lord of the castle was concealed when the Roundheads sacked it. And such a range of stabling, too! I must have two hunters if I am to keep up my riding.’
The sons gave their unhesitating opinion in favour of the estate. Land was cheap in England at present—many of the owners being only too glad to get rid of property which paid ridiculously low in interest on capital, and was year by year involving the so-called proprietor in heavier expense. As to the value of a large historic family mansion, it was looked upon as the proverbial white elephant, which the owners would be only too pleased to get rid of, once and for ever.
Then the choice—that was the difficulty. Arnold Banneret shuddered when he thought of the scores of desirable places, old and half-ruinous, ill-drained, decayed, damp, smothered in ivy, shaded by vast growths of world-old groves that it would be sacrilege to cut down, and death by slow and gradual process to leave unaltered. The new mansion ghastly with stucco—redolent of fresh paint—the mistaken ambition of the manufacturer, tired of so soon after the contractor was paid, and disgracefully new like the baronetcy; these and other failures, like Banquo’s line of shadowy kings, passed before him in review, until he almost resolved to cut the whole concern and go back to Australia, where, at any rate, one could enjoy one’s life in peace. This was after a long day’s rail to examine an over-praised, over-valued, highly unsuitable investment, with too much house and too little land—both being indecently inferior in quality, besides being in a dull and undesirable county.