“I have heard of what you did a day or two ago, Mr. Cardover--we have all heard of it. You have created an excellent impression--most excellent. The papers have been very flattering, but not more so than you deserve. Ransby feels quite proud of you. Though you are a Londoner, you belong to Ransby--no getting away from that. I suppose you’d tell us that you belong to Oxford. Ah, well, it’s natural--but we claim you first.” All the time he had been talking he and my grandmother had been signaling to one another with their eyes, as though one were saying, “You tell him,” and the other, “No, you tell him.” When they did make up their minds to take me into their secret, they did it both together. “Your grandfather--Sir Charles Evrard,” they began, and there they stuck. At last it came out that my grandfather had expressed a wish to see me, and had sent Lawyer Seagirt to make the necessary inquiries about me. This action on his part could have but one meaning. Two days later I was invited over to Woadley Hall to spend a week there. Before I went, I had an interview with Vi, in my grandmother’s presence. She promised me that she would not leave Ransby until after I returned. My fear had been that some spasm of caution might make her seize this opportunity to return to America. I drove out to Woadley Hall late in the afternoon, planning to get there in time for dinner. I felt considerably nervous. I had been brought up in dread of Sir Charles since childhood. I did not know what kind of conduct was expected from me or what kind of reception I might expect. As we swung in through the iron gates and passed up the long avenue of chestnuts and elms which led through the parkland to the house, my nervousness increased into childish consternation. The pride of ancestry and the comfortable signs of wealth filled me with distress. I belonged to this, and was on my way to be examined to see whether I could prove worthy. I was not ashamed of my father’s family, but I was prepared to be angry if anyone else should show shame of them. Far away, on the edge of the green grassland, just where the woods began to cast their shadow, I could see dappled fallow-deer grazing. Colts, hearing us approaching, lifted up their heads and stared, then whisking their tails galloped off to watch us from behind their dams. Turrets and broken gables of the old Jacobean Hall rose out of the trees before us. Rooks were coming home to their nests in the tall elms, cawing. The home-farm lay over to our left; the herd was coming out from the milking, jingling their bells. A streak of orange lay across the blue of the west--the beginning of the sunset.