“I’ve got the keys,” said the old man, and put his hand in at his door and reached them from a nail.
“I s’pose no one lives there?” said Elfrida.
“Not now,” said the old man, coming back along the garden path. “Lord Arden, he died a fortnight ago come Tuesday, and the place is shut up till the new lord’s found.”
“I wish I was the new lord,” said Edred, as they followed the old man along the lane.
“An’ how old might you be?” the old man asked.
“I’m ten nearly. It’s my birthday to-morrow,” said Edred. “How old are you?”
“Getting on for eighty. I’ve seen a deal in my time. If you was the young lord you’d have a chance none of the rest of them ever had—you being the age you are.”
“What sort of chance?”
“Why,” said the old man, “don’t you know the saying? I thought every one knowed it hereabouts.”
“What saying?”