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"Were you ever at Oakford?" she asked, turning her grey eyes on me. She spoke almost abruptly, and with a touch of imperiousness that suddenly recalled to me where I had seen those eyes before. "Certainly," said I, "and at the tinsmith's." "What were you doing there?" she asked, and after all these years there was no mistaking the accent and gesture of the little lady of the grey beaver.

I did not half believe in old Giles' wonders, and yet I wished to see the place myself, if only to learn how much of all he described to us was true. I supposed that "the family" must have been at home when I was at Oakford, or Mr. and Mrs. Buckle would surely have taken me to see the Grange.

If we stayed long, my father was to go backwards and forwards, and he was to fetch us when we went away. His anxiety was still so great, and led him to watch me in a manner which fidgeted me so much, that I think the doctor was only too glad that the place should be sufficiently near to induce him to leave me to the care of Nurse Bundle. We went by coach to Oakford.

Oakford and a friend of hers, Miss Clinch, about the Americans and the English, especially dwelling on the defects of the latter, among which we reckoned a wretched meanness in money transactions, a lack of any embroidery of honor and liberality in their dealings, so that they require close watching, or they will be sure to take you at advantage.

When the coach stopped in the High Street of Oakford, and Nurse Bundle had descended, he so far relaxed, as he handed out me and the worsted workbag, as to indulge his national thirst for general information by the inquiring remark: "You'll be staying at the 'Crown' the night, mem?" "No, sir. We stop here," said Nurse Bundle.

Then we walked clear to the back of the orchard, clumb the rail fence, walked through the meadow a roundabout way and came to the road on the other side of the Tate farm. So here we struck out for Atterberry, so as to walk the railroad to Havaner. We thought we could make Oakford before night. When we got fairly started Mitch said, "Something terrible has happened to me, Skeet it's terrible."

As our churchwarden backed his advice by offering to lend waggons and horses to take us to Oakford, if the other farmers would do the same, his speech decided the matter. We all wanted to go to Oakford, and to Oakford it was decided that we should go.

There was a "gentleman's place" on the outskirts of Oakford, which sometimes, in the absence of the family, was "shown" to the public: old Giles had seen it as a boy, and the picture he drew of its glories fairly carried us away, the Rector and tutor excepted.

Grandpa liked gospel tunes, like "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," but grandma liked "Rocky Road to Jordan" and "The Speckled Hen"; and John could play these and couldn't play religious tunes worth a cent. And John told stories as before; and he told about a man at Oakford who never had any money and always wanted drinks.

The expedition was very successful, and we all returned in safety to Dacrefield; rather, I think, to the astonishment of some of the good-wives of the village, who looked upon any one who passed the parish bounds as a traveller, and thought our jaunt to Oakford "venturesome" almost to a "tempting of Providence."