“Eh, I am glad to see that bit o’ light twinkling,” she exclaimed.  “It’s the light in the lodge window.  We shall get a good cup of tea after a bit, at all events.”

It was “after a bit,” as she said, for when the carriage passed through the park gates there was still two miles of avenue to drive through and the trees (which nearly met overhead) made it seem as if they were driving through a long dark vault.

They drove out of the vault into a clear space and stopped before an immensely long but low-built house which seemed to ramble round a stone court.  At first Mary thought that there were no lights at all in the windows, but as she got out of the carriage she saw that one room in a corner up-stairs showed a dull glow.

The entrance door was a huge one made of massive, curiously shaped panels of oak studded with big iron nails and bound with great iron bars.  It opened into an enormous hall, which was so dimly lighted that the faces in the portraits on the walls and the figures in the suits of armor made Mary feel that she did not want to look at them.  As she stood on the stone floor she looked a very small, odd little black figure, and she felt as small and lost and odd as she looked.

A neat, thin old man stood near the manservant who opened the door for them.

“You are to take her to her room,” he said in a husky voice.  “He doesn’t want to see her.  He’s going to London in the morning.”

“Very well, Mr. Pitcher,” Mrs. Medlock answered.  “So long as I know what’s expected of me, I can manage.”

“What’s expected of you, Mrs. Medlock,” Mr. Pitcher said, “is that you make sure that he’s not disturbed and that he doesn’t see what he doesn’t want to see.”

And then Mary Lennox was led up a broad staircase and down a long corridor and up a short flight of steps and through another corridor and another, until a door opened in a wall and she found herself in a room with a fire in it and a supper on a table.

Mrs. Medlock said unceremoniously: 

“Well, here you are!  This room and the next are where you’ll live—­and you must keep to them.  Don’t you forget that!”

It was in this way Mistress Mary arrived at Misselthwaite Manor and she had perhaps never felt quite so contrary in all her life.

CHAPTER IV

MARTHA

When she opened her eyes in the morning it was because a young housemaid had come into her room to light the fire and was kneeling on the hearth-rug raking out the cinders noisily.  Mary lay and watched her for a few moments and then began to look about the room.  She had never seen a room at all like it and thought it curious and gloomy.  The walls were covered with tapestry with a forest scene embroidered on it.  There were fantastically dressed people under the trees and in the distance there was a glimpse of the turrets of a castle.  There were hunters and horses and dogs and ladies.  Mary felt as if she were in the forest with them.  Out of a deep window she could see a great climbing stretch of land which seemed to have no trees on it, and to look rather like an endless, dull, purplish sea.