"Well, however!" Nancy concluded, hastily, "We COULD have people
out, that's the main thing!"




Chapter Thirteen


For a year or two the Bradleys kept up these Sunday expeditions
without accomplishing anything definite. But they accomplished a
great amount of indirect happiness, ate a hundred picnic lunches,
and accumulated ten times that many amusing, and inspiring, and
pleasant, recollections. Bert carried the lovely Anne; Nancy had
the thermos bottle and Anne's requirements in a small suit-case;
and the boys had a neat cardboard box of lunch apiece.

And then some months after their seventh anniversary, Bert sold
the Witcher Place.

This was the most important financial event of their lives. The
Witcher Place had been so long in the hands of Bert's firm for
sale that it had become a household word in the Bradley family,
and in other families. Nobody ever expected to pocket the handsome
commission that the owner and the firm between them had placed
upon the deal, and to Nancy the thing was only a myth until a
certain autumn Sunday, when she and Bert and the children were
roaming about the Jersey hills, and stumbled upon the place.