Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/302

 Turning up a lane, between sweet-smelling hedges and goodly rows of chestnuts, with a great expanse of pleasant fruit-trees on either hand, we accordingly drove up to the old manor-house, and politely inquired for the proprietor. Our advent had already been observed, and out came the old squire himself to receive us; and no sooner did we make ourselves known to him, than the hearty English welcome we received made us more than ever doubtful that we were not the sport of some beneficent fairy, and that we were not really back in the old country after all.

The manor-house, with its many buildings, was the very picture of an old English homestead. The spacious courtyard, green with grass, surrounded by the stables, barns, and outhouses; the running brook close by, wimpling merrily over its pebbly bed; and all around, the trim avenues of neatly pruned fruit-trees and bushes, with the big black bulk of the wooded mountain in the rear,—composed such a picture of rural happiness and contentment as is rarely seen out of "Merrie England." Then the smell of apples about the place. Apples by the ton in the long low lofts and cool spacious granaries; apples and almonds of the choicer sorts in the verandahs and in sweetly-scented rooms. In the orchard a lovely pond, green with mosses, lustrous with the sheen of sun and water, and fringed with loveliest ferns, was well stocked with fish, which are here acclimatized, and from which the streamlets are being stocked. From the spacious verandah we look