“Look,” said Patricia, “the woods end.”
She spoke very quietly, pointing to the door of blue which widened as they climbed to it, letting them out from the trees. The car dropped a hundred yards between the warm coral-and-ivory of hawthorn hedgerows; seemed to stop of its own accord at a quaint red-walled brown-gabled house whose lower windows were almost level with the Crossley’s wheels.
“This isn’t the place,” thought Patricia. Yet somehow the peaked and ivied gable with its one leaded window looked familiar—familiar as the road they had climbed through the woods. Just under the window, half-hidden by the ivy, was an old sign-board: “T. Tebbits. Builder & Contractor,” read Patricia. But Francis, sharper-eyed, had seen the other sign which peered over the garden-hedge—a plain square of oak, newly painted with the words:—
“Two Good Houses To Let.”
“I say, Pat,” he said, pointing to it, “why not try here? . . .”
There came out of the house a hatless man with weather-beaten face, clean-shaven except for the fringe of hair under his chin, bushy of eyebrows, dressed collarless in a rusty black cardigan jacket and corduroy-trousers. He had hard blue eyes, hairy ears, thin lips; might have been any age from fifty-five to eighty.
“Might you be wanting anything?” he asked.
“Are you Mr. Tebbits?” Patricia smiled down at him.
“That’s my name, missis.”
“We came about the houses,” went on Patricia, indicating the notice-board.