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 seekers opened the long gate and went up the gravel drive between the rhododendrons and other shrubberies towards the house.

I think I have explained to you before that the eldest son of anybody is called the representative of the family if his father isn't there. This was why Oswald now took the lead. When we got to the last turn of the drive it was settled that the others were to noiselessly ambush in the rhododendrons, and Oswald was to go on alone and ask at the house for the grandmother from India—I mean Miss Ashleigh.

So he did, but when he got to the front of the house and saw how neat the flower-beds were with red geraniums, and the windows all bright and speckless with muslin blinds and brass rods, and a green parrot in a cage in the porch, and the door-step newly whited, lying clean and untrodden in the sunshine, he stood still and thought of his boots and how dusty the roads were, and wished he had not gone into the farm-yard after eggs before starting that morning. As he stood there in anxious uncertainness he heard a low voice among the bushes. It said, "Hist! Oswald, here!'" and it was the voice of Alice.

So he went back to the others among the shrubs, and they all crowded round their leader, full of impartable news.

"She's not in the house; she's here," Alice said, in a low whisper that seemed nearly all S's. "Close by—she went by just this minute with a gentleman."