The Aspinall home at Fallowfield was an ancient, many-gabled grange, with mullioned windows, recessed window-seats, expansive two-leaved entrance arched above; noble hall, with trophies from the hunting-field; grand staircase, with massive carved oak balusters, flights of broad low steps, and wide square landings; long corridors, three or four rooms of magnificent proportions, and clusters of little ones grouped around unsuspected passages and stairs; open fire-places recently enclosed, and double doors to the chief chambers. Antiquity had set its seal upon the place, and filled the panelled rooms with quaint or obsolete furniture and adornments, as each successive generation had left its quota. High-backed chairs, sofas of grotesque device with dim worsted-work cushions and covers, heavy draperies of silk or velvet, and tables with legs of all possible patterns. It had come to the former Mrs. Aspinall from her ancestors, and from her to her son on his marriage; consequently this was the home proper of Laurence and his wife, although they had a suite of rooms set apart for them at Ardwick, and Mr. Aspinall would fain have had his fascinating daughter-in-law abide there always, instead of making his house a mere convenience for visiting in town. Stabling and other outhouses were attached, the gardens were well laid out, there was a good quantity of grass land, all enclosed within a high wall, and it lay away from the main road. Mr. Aspinall’s carriage was a close one, for service as well as show. Mr. Laurence, on his accession to his mother’s property and his wife’s dowry, added to other extravagances not a like carriage, but a new Tilbury, and astonished the crowd by driving tandem. Whitsuntide is the great annual festival of Manchester. It is the race week, the time when the Sunday-school children dress in their best to walk in procession and have excursional treats into the country. In 1823 Whitsunday fell on the 18th of May, when the hawthorn scented the air, and cherry-blossom snowed on the carriage which Mr. Aspinall sent for his daughter-in-law, that she might witness from his drawing-room windows the interesting spectacle on the Green, and preside over the hospitalities of his open house during the week. At that time, as now, Monday was the day set apart for the children of all the Established Church Schools to assemble at the Collegiate Church, sing anthems, and thence defile in long procession six abreast, attended by their respective clergy and teachers, until they reached the Green, where the girls in their white caps and frocks were ranged within the enclosure of the Pond, the boys forming a dark cordon around them, and the crowd a motley one beyond. And then from the multitudinous young throats poured forth anthems of praise, in a volume of swelling harmony which hushed to silence the listening birds above them.