nearly one o'clock
I only looked about from one familiar object to another , pale , excited , not quite apprehending my departure , and wondering at my own composure . But when we reached the old bridge , with the tall osiers standing by the buttress , and looked back at poor Knowl -- the places we love and are leaving look so fairy-like and so sad in the clear distance , and this is the finest view of the gabled old house , with its slanting meadow-lands and noble timber reposing in solemn groups -- I gazed at the receding vision , and the tears came at last , and I wept in silence long after the fair picture was hidden from view by the intervening uplands . I was relieved , and when we had made our next change of horses , and got into a country that was unknown to me , the new scenery and the sense of progress worked their accustomed effects on a young traveller who had lived a particularly secluded life , and I began to experience , on the whole , a not unpleasurable excitement . Mary Quince and I , with the hopefulness of inexperienced travellers , began already to speculate about our proximity to Bartram-Haugh , and were sorely disappointed when we heard from the nondescript courier -- more like a ostler than a servant , who sat behind in charge of us and the luggage , and represented my guardian 's special care -- at nearly one o'clock , that we had still forty miles to go , a considerable portion of which was across the high Derbyshire mountains , before we reached Bartram-Haugh . The fact was , we had driven at a pace accommodated rather to the convenience of the horses than to our impatience ; and finding , at the quaint little inn where we now halted , that we must wait for a nail or two in a loose shoe of one of our relay , we consulted , and being both hungry , agreed to beguile the time with an early dinner , which we enjoyed very sociably in a queer little parlour with a bow window , and commanding , with a little garden for foreground , a very pretty landscape . Good Mary Quince , like myself , had quite dried her tears by this time , and we were both highly interested , and I a little nervous , too , about our arrival and reception at Bartram . Some time , of course , was lost in this pleasant little parlour , before we found ourselves once more pursuing our way .