frightened me so. I thought you'd hurt yourself."

"I don't know how my voice came big like that," said Mark
apologetically. "I only meant it to be a whisper. But you weren't
dreadfully frightened? Or were you?"

His mother smiled.

"No, not dreadfully frightened."

"Well, do you think I might dress myself and go in the garden?"

"You mustn't disturb grandfather."

"Oh, mother, of course not."

"All right, darling. But it's only six o'clock. Very early. And you must
remember that grandfather may be tired. He had to wait an hour for us at
Rosemarket last night."

"He's very nice, isn't he?"

Mark did not ask this tentatively; he really did think that his
grandfather was very nice, although he had been puzzled and not a little
frightened by his bushy black eyebrows slanting up to a profusion of
white hair. Mark had never seen such eyebrows, and he wondered whatever
grandfather's moustache would be like if it were allowed to grow.

"He's a dear," said Mrs. Lidderdale fervidly. "And now, sweetheart, if
you really intend to dress yourself run along, because Mother wants to
sleep a little longer if she can."

The only difficulty Mark had was with his flannel front, because one of
the tapes vanished like a worm into its hole, and nothing in his armoury
was at once long enough and pointed enough to hook it out again. Finally
he decided that at such an early hour of the morning it would not matter
if he went out exposing his vest, and soon he was wandering in that
enchanted shrubbery of rhododendrons, alternating between imagining it
to be the cave of Aladdin or the beach where Sinbad found all the
pebbles to be precious stones. He wandered down hill through the
thicket, listening with a sense of satisfaction to the increasing
squelchiness of the peaty soil and feeling when the blackbirds fled at
his approach with shrill quack and flapping wings much more like a
hunter than he ever felt in the nursery at Lima Street. He resolved to
bring his gun with him next time. This was just the place to find a
hippopotamus, or even a crocodile. Mark had reached the bottom of the
slope and discovered a dark sluggish stream full of decayed vegetable
matter which was slowly oozing on its course. Or even a crocodile, he
thought again; and he looked carefully at a half-submerged log. Or even
a crocodile . . . yes, but people had often thought before that logs
were not crocodiles and had not discovered their mistake until they were