Only--where were we to go?
Finally, we all decided that we would go to Oakford.
It was not because Oakford had been the end of our consultation long ago, after my illness, nor because Nurse Bundle had any voice in the matter, it was a certain bullet-headed, slow-tongued old farmer, one of our teachers, who voted for our going to Oakford; and more by persistently repeating his advice than by any very strong reasons there seemed to be for our following it, he carried the day.
"I've know'd Oakford, man and boy, for twenty year," he repeated, at intervals of three minutes or so, during what would now be called a "teachers' meeting" in the school-room.

In fact, Oakford was his native place, though he was passing his old age in Dacrefield, and he had a natural desire to see it again, and a natural belief that the spot where he had been young and strong, and light-hearted, had especial merits of its own.
Even though we had nothing better to propose, old Giles' love for home would hardly have decided us, but he had something more to add.

There was a "gentleman's place" on the outskirts of Oakford, which sometimes, in the absence of the family, was "shown" to the public: old Giles had seen it as a boy, and the picture he drew of its glories fairly carried us away, the Rector and tutor excepted.

They shrugged their shoulders with faces of comical despair as the old man, having fairly taken the lead, babbled on about the "picters," the "stattys," and the "yaller satin cheers" in the grand drawing-room; whilst the other teachers listened with open mouths, and an evident and growing desire to see Oakford Grange.

I did not half believe in old Giles' wonders, and yet I wished to see the place myself, if only to learn how much of all he described to us was true.