Читать книгу The Oaken Heart онлайн

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The actual organisation had the simplicity of the obvious and the new unity which we had so suddenly achieved carried the arrangement through with the beautiful ease of a conjuring trick.

There are five roads leading out of Auburn, and somewhere along each road there turned out to be someone who appeared to be not only the best but the proper person to help. This element of properness is always cropping up in Auburn, and, since it is based on personalities rather than on any material consideration, it is a very valuable thing.

In the ordinary way the gathering in the dining-room might well have hesitated to ask so much of anybody, but on that day it simply sent young Ralph down on a bicycle to each of them and begged him or his wife to come at once for the love of Mike. Although it was just after midday and an awkward time, everybody came as naturally and as simply as they had been approached and no one thought that part of it at all odd. Doey and Albert's father took the cards out of alphabetical order and put them into a sensible geographical sequence, and as soon as each "proper" person arrived they gave him the pack of cards for his own road--miles long, some of them--and asked him to drop in at each house, explain the situation, and see what could be done.