k up a
flag! How nice of him! It looks so festive. Bags me go in his chariot."

It took a little while to arrange mistresses, girls, and tea-baskets
inside the two motors, but at last everything was packed in, and they
started off in the direction of Bradstone. Other people were out
enjoying Saturday's holiday, and cars, bicycles, and conveyances were
frequent on the road. Grinsdale Park, their destination, was approached
by great gates, outside which the wagonettes stopped and unloaded their
passengers. Miss Walters, armed with Sir Ranald Joynson's letter, called
at the lodge for permission to enter, and, her credentials being in
strict order, the party was duly admitted.

"Won't everybody who sees us go in be just green with envy?" rejoiced
Edith. "Did you see how those two cyclists tried to hang on to us and
push in too? Miss Walters looked at them most witheringly. 'May I ask if
you have a private permit?' I heard her say to them. It squashed them
flat, and they beat a retreat."

"I believe Sir Ranald used to let the public in at one time," said
Noreen, "but people behaved so atrociously that he had to stop. Rough
boys used to tear about and break the bushes, and take the flowers, and
do a great deal of damage."

"I know! I've heard about it," said Lilias. "They went bird-nesting,
too, and took all the eggs. That was the absolute finish. Sir Ranald is
very keen on natural history, and he keeps these grounds as a sort of
bird sanctuary. I believe quite rare kinds build here, and he never lets
them be disturbed."

"I wonder he gave us a permit to come!"

"Well, you see, most of the young birds are fledged by now, and,
besides, he wouldn't expect us to go about climbing trees and robbing
nests!"

Carrying the picnic-baskets amongst them, the party started forth along
the drive, but after ten minutes' walking turned down a bypath into the
woods. They were at the edge of a beautiful lake, and on one side of
them stretched a gleaming expanse of water, edged with shimmering reeds,
and on the other grew thick groves of trees with a carpet of wild
hyacinths beneath. The sun glinted through the new green leaves on to
the springing bracken and bluebells, and made long rifts of light across
the water, birds were flitting about and twittering in the trees, and
everywhere there was that delicious scent of the woodlands, a mixture of
honey and flowers and warm moist earth and damp moss, which is the
incense nature burns a