Miss Drury pressed the two young ladies to pay her a visit of some weeks in Yorkshire; and as soon as the corn-harvest was got in they took their flight thither. Their reception was as glowingly kind as it was possible to be. Elizabeth Drury and her father met them at the next town, and drove them to Garnside Farm, their home, in one of the beautiful dales for which that part of Yorkshire is famous. The house was old but spacious, handsomely furnished, and surrounded by a large garden. A great extent of barns and out-buildings near it, presented almost the aspect of a village. A wide prospect along a broad valley, through which ran a rapid and clear stream, and, over the valley, of dark woods bounded by long azure hills or fells, was a constant charm for the eye from the windows. Mr. Trant Drury was a tall, gentlemanly, rather sparely-built man of middle age, always clad in a blue lapelled coat with gilt buttons, a pale yellow kerseymere striped waistcoat, cord small-clothes, and handsome top-boots. He was energetic and somewhat impetuous in his manner, whilst Mrs. Drury, a tall, slight woman, had something timid and over-gentle in hers. Miss Drury was the same natural and loveable person as they had seen her on her visit. She seemed to form a free and unconstrained medium betwixt father and mother, where otherwise the mother might have sunk into a mere automaton, obeying with a certain dread the dominant temperament of her husband. Mr. Drury was evidently a man full of the science and business of his life. His bookcase displayed all the chief works on agriculture and bucolics, from Virgil and Columella down to Tull, Kames, Arthur Young, Sinclair, and the rest of the great georgic writers. His sheds and waggon yards displayed all the varieties of modern machines for facilitating the operations of rural culture. His barns and cattle-houses, his stables, with their drainage and ventilations, his threshing and winnowing, and chaff and turnip-cutting, his oat and furze-bruising engines, his riding and team horses, herds of Holderness cattle, and his flocks of mixed Cheviot and Merino sheep, were all objects of a pride and interest that knew no bounds. The Misses Woodburn, as the daughters of a gentleman farmer, must turn out with him and visit them all. He very soon had them on foot all over his farm, and pointed out his corn and grass lands, the evident effects of his drainings on his higher lands and sluicings on his meadows, his already-springing wheat, his exquisitely neat ploughing, his turnips and beet-root. Elizabeth, ever at their side, endeavoured to enliven their agricultural survey by, ever and anon, pointing out some beauty of the landscape, or relating some amusing story of the country people living around.