“Be you from the agents?” asked Mr. Tebbits suspiciously.
“No. We were just passing, and we thought. . . .”
“Well, that’s a good thing.” The old man smiled grimly. “Because I won’t have no more agents. They be all robbers, it seems to me. Now what sort of a house was you looking for, missis? I asks because it’s no good a wasting your time if you wants the sort of house I hasn’t got. There be two of ’em, one’s a bit cottage-like and t’other’s bigger. But they bain’t neither of ’em what you’d call big.”
“Are they a long way away?” interrupted Patricia.
“Well, missis, one is middling far and t’other’s quite close. Sunflowers—that’s the name of the bigger one and a silly name it be, to my way of thinking, because there bain’t never a sunflower near it—her’s just up the road. T’other. . . .”
“Could we go and see it, do you think?” Patricia interrupted again.
“Aye. If you’ll bide a minute, I’ll just go and get my cap.” He disappeared into the house; re-appeared.
“Now if you’ll drive on slowly, missis, I’ll follow you. ’Tis the first house you comes to on the left hand side of the road. ’Bout a hundred and fifty yards down, two hundred mebbe.”
Mr. Tebbits declined a lift, and they motored on without him; rounded a bend in the hedge-rows; and saw in front of them, half hidden by greenery, low red roofs that curled up to high red chimney-stacks and down to square windows, set in walls of mellow brick-work criss-crossed with the gray of weather-beaten oak.
Patricia’s heart gave a great leap: for this was the very home she had imagined as they came through the woods!