disapproval. 'They're all alike.'

I never contradict Miss Benjafield--one would as soon contradict
the Statue of Liberty--so I merely breathed sympathetically.

'What's he here for I'd like to know?'

It occurred to me that I also should like to know. In another
thirty hours I was to find out.

I shall lay myself open to a charge of denseness such as even
Doctor Watson would have scorned when I say that, though I thought
of the matter a good deal on my way back to the school, I did not
arrive at the obvious solution. Much teaching and taking of duty
had dulled my wits, and the presence at Sanstead House of the
Little Nugget did not even occur to me as a reason why strange
Americans should be prowling in the village.

We now come to the remarkable activity of White, the butler.

It happened that same evening.

It was not late when I started on my way back to the house, but the
short January day was over, and it was very dark as I turned in at
the big gate of the school and made my way up the drive. The drive
at Sanstead House was a fine curving stretch of gravel, about two
hundred yards in length, flanked on either side by fir trees and
rhododendrons. I stepped out briskly, for it had begun to freeze.
Just as I caught sight through the trees of the lights of the
windows, there came to me the sound of running feet.