vehicle all day. The silence was almost oppressive; no birds sang, the only sound was the drip-drip of the rain on our umbrellas and the occasional trickling of some stream; and though Newman said that he often saw deer in this bush we saw nothing but a weka (a wingless native bird) or two, and sometimes a rabbit scuttling across the road.
At about half-past four we stopped to change horses, and the stable-man’s wife gave us all tea in her lonely cottage. Never had hot tea been more welcome, nor our shillings so gladly paid. Our feet, in spite of the precious rubbers purchased so much against our will in Wellington, were wet and like ice, quite numbed with cold, and oh! how we longed for sensible woollen stockings instead of the comfortless thin silk ones we were wearing! The nice little hostess invited us into her kitchen after we had partaken of her scones and tea, and there we took off the wet shoes and tried to dry and warm our feet, but it was not of much use seeing that we had to cross a stretch of soaking grass to get to the coach standing in the middle of a very muddy road!
Another two hours’ driving through the same beautiful woodland brought us to another coach-stables with an hotel attached, called Longford. It was the oddest little “hotel” that ever bore the title; clean, but very primitive, baths undreamed-of luxuries, and very few rooms. But they were very nice about giving us plenty of hot water, and the food, though plain, was excellent. It was at Longford that we first realised the full value of the advice Colonel Deane had given us, to make a stringent rule of always writing to engage rooms in advance, and as much in advance as possible,—for while the other passengers were crowded two into a tiny apartment scarcely big enough for one we were allotted the best the house afforded.
