Shadowed Gold by Alice Fox Parry

But the day was not yet over for the team. After losing themselves twice in a maze of cross roads, at last they reached their destination, and surveyed it with dissatisfied eyes. It was not at all what their fancy had pictured. The house faced the road, square and uncompromising, built of hard stone that somehow emphasised the corners, so that the front seemed quite unrelieved by the small tin-roofed verandah, which stood sadly in need of a coat of paint, as did the roof and the square window-frames, from which uncurtained windows stared at them unblinkingly with a certain hostility that daunted the beholder. There was a semblance of a garden in front, where a few wilted geraniums had alone successfully defied the summer heat.

"Frightful!" wailed Valerie and Katherine in one breath. "Appalling!"