"Mother has sent you biscuits and sandwiches, but we, can't get coffee or anything hot till we get home." Nine o'clock, Esther told him, at Newcastle, but it was so boiling hot they had had to leave most of it in their cups and scramble into the train again.

The horses were whipped up; and flew over the muddy roads at a pace that Pip, despite his weariness, could not but admire.
But it was a very damp, miserable drive, and the General wept with hardly a break from start to finish, greatly to Esther's vexation, for it was his first introduction to his grandfather.
At last, when everyone was beginning to feel the very end of patience had come, a high white gate broke the monotony of dripping wet fences.
"Home!" Esther said joyfully.

She jumped the General up and down on her knee.
"Little Boy Blue, Mum fell off that gate when she was three," said she, looking at it affectionately as Pip swung it open.
Splash through the rain again; the wheels went softly now, for the way was covered with wet fallen leaves.
"Oh, where IS the house ?" Bunty said, peeping through Pip's arm on the box seat, and seeing still nothing but an endless vista of gum trees.

"I thought, you said we were there, Esther." "Oh, the front door is not quite so near the gate as at Misrule," she said.

And indeed it was not.
It was fifteen minutes before they even saw the chimneys, then there was another gate to be opened.