He and Felicia, or he and Ken, went
there when cookery or carpentry left an elder free. For when they had
discovered that the tall old house, though by no means so neglected as
the garden, was as empty, they ventured often into the place. Kirk
invented endless tales of enchanted castles, and peopled the still
lawns and deserted alleys with every hero he had ever read or heard of.
Who could tell? They might indeed lurk in the silent tangle--invisible
to him only as all else was invisible. So he liked to think, and
wandered, rapt, up and down the grass-grown paths of this enchanting
play-ground.
It was not far to the hedge--over the rail fence, across the stubbly
meadow. Kirk had been privately amassing landmarks. He had enough, he
considered, to venture forth alone to the garden of mystery. Felicia was
in the kitchen--not eating bread and honey, but reading a cook-book and
making think-lines in her forehead. Ken was in Asquam. Kirk stepped off
the door-stone; sharp to the right, along the wall of the house, then a
stretch in the open to the well, over the fence--and then nothing but
certain queer stones and the bare feel of the faint path that had
already been worn in the meadow.
Kirk won the breach in the hedge and squeezed through. Then he was alone
in the warm, green-smelling stillness of the trees. He found his way
from the moss velvet under the pines to the paved path, and followed
it, unhesitating, to the terrace before the house.
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