way was covered with wet fallen leaves.

"Oh, where IS the house?" Bunty said, peeping through Pip's arm
on the box seat, and seeing still nothing but an endless vista of
gum trees. "I thought, you said we were there, Esther."

"Oh, the front door is not quite so near the gate as at Misrule,"
she said. And indeed it was not.

It was fifteen minutes before they even saw the chimneys, then there
was another gate to be opened. A gravel drive now trimly kept,
high box round the flower-beds, a wilderness of rose bushes that
pleased Meg's eye, two chip tennis-courts under water.

Then the house.

The veranda was all they noticed; such a wide one it was, as wide as
an ordinary room, and there were lounges and chairs and tables
scattered about, hammocks swung from the corners, and a green thick
creeper with rain-blown wisteria for an outer wall.

"O--o--oh," said Pip; "o--oh! I AM stiff--o--oh, I say, what are you
doing?"

For Esther had deposited her infant on his knee, and leapt out of
the waggonette and up the veranda steps.

There was a tiny old lady there, with a great housekeeping apron
on. Esther gathered her right up in her arms, and they kissed and
clung to each other till they were both crying.