re
you go in you speak to the lady with the balloons, who sits just
outside. This is as near to being inside as she may venture, because,
if she were to let go her hold of the railings for one moment, the
balloons would lift her up, and she would be flown away. She sits very
squat, for the balloons are always tugging at her, and the strain has
given her quite a red face. Once she was a new one, because the old
one had let go, and David was very sorry for the old one, but as she
did let go, he wished he had been there to see.

[Illustration: The Hump, which is the part of the Broad Walk where all
the big races are run]

The Gardens are a tremendous big place, with millions and hundreds of
trees; and first you come to the Figs, but you scorn to loiter there,
for the Figs is the resort of superior little persons, who are
forbidden to mix with the commonalty, and is so named, according to
legend, because they dress in full fig. These dainty ones are
themselves contemptuously called Figs by David and other heroes, and
you have a key to the manners and customs of this dandiacal section of
the Gardens when I tell you that cricket is called crickets here.
Occasionally a rebel Fig climbs over the fence into the world, and such
a one was Miss Mabel Grey, of whom I shall tell you when we come to
Miss Mabel Grey's gate. She was the only really celebrated Fig.

We are now in the Broad Walk, and it is as much bigger than the other
walks as your father is bigger than you. David wondered if it began
little, and grew and grew, until it was quite grown up, and whether the
other walks are its babies, and he drew a picture, which diverted him
very much, of the Broad Walk giving a tiny walk an airing in a
perambulator. In the Broad Walk you meet all the people who are worth
knowing, and there is usually a grown-up with them to prevent them
going on the damp grass, and to make them stand disgraced at the corner
of a seat if they have been mad-dog or Mary-Annish. To be Mary-Annish
is to behave like a girl, whimpering because nurse won't carry you, or
simpering with your thumb in your mouth, and it is a hateful quality;
but to be mad-dog is to kick out at everything, and there is some
satisfaction in that.

If I were to point out all the notable places as we pass up the Broad
Walk, it would be time to turn back before we reach them, and I simply
wave my stick at Cecco Hewlett's Tree, that memorable spot where a boy
called Cecco lo