Denny accepted the checks and, in a neighbourly fashion, helped the station master in selecting the trunks, no large task when there was but a drummer's case besides. He went about this meditatively, inwardly searching out the way of putting the question that should elicit the identity of his fares. There was a way, he knew. But they had seated themselves in the hack, and now explained that if he would take two trunks along the rest could come with the freight due at least by to-morrow; and he had driven them through the wide street bordered with elms and behind them what Addington knew as "house and grounds" before he thought of a way. It was when he had bumped the trunks into the empty hall and Lydia was paying him from a smart purse of silver given her by her dancing pupils that he got hold of his inquisitorial outfit. "I don't know," said Denny, "as I know you folks. Do you come from round here?" Lydia smiled at him pleasantly. "Good night," said she. "Get the freight round in the morning, won't you? and be sure you bring somebody to help open the crates." Then Denny climbed sorrowfully up on his box, and when he looked round he found them staring there as they had stared at the station: only now he saw they were in a row and "holding hands". "I think," said Lydia, in rather a hushed voice, as if she told the others a pretty secret, "it's a very beautiful place." "You girls haven't been here, have you?" asked the colonel. "No," said Anne, "you'd just let it when we came to live with you."