e as it
seems now--when I forgot the garden altogether--when I was about
eight or nine it may have been. Do you remember me as a kid at
Saint Athelstan's?"

"Rather!"

"I didn't show any signs did I in those days of having a secret dream?"

II

He looked up with a sudden smile.

"Did you ever play North-West Passage with me? . . . . . No,
of course you didn't come my way!"

"It was the sort of game," he went on, "that every imaginative
child plays all day. The idea was the discovery of a North-West
Passage to school. The way to school was plain enough; the game
consisted in finding some way that wasn't plain, starting off ten
minutes early in some almost hopeless direction, and working one's
way round through unaccustomed streets to my goal. And one day I
got entangled among some rather low-class streets on the other side
of Campden Hill, and I began to think that for once the game would
be against me and that I should get to school late. I tried rather
desperately a street that seemed a _cul de sac_, and found a
passage at the end. I hurried through that with renewed hope. 'I
shall do it yet,' I said, and passed a row of frowsy little shops
that were inexplicably familiar to me, and behold! there was my
long white wall and the green door that led to the enchanted
garden!

"The thing whacked upon me suddenly. Then, after all, that garden,
that wonderful garden, wasn't a dream!" . . . .

He paused.

"I suppose my second experience with the green door marks the
world of difference there is between the busy life of a schoolboy
and the infinite leisure of a child. Anyhow, this second time I
didn't for a moment think of going in straight away. You see . . .
For one thing my mind was full of the idea of getting to school
in time--set on not breaking my record for punctuality. I must
surely have felt _some_ little desire at least to try the
door--yes, I must have felt that . . . . . But I seem to remember
the attraction of the door mainly as another obstacle to my
overmastering determination to get to school. I was immediately
interested by this discovery I had made, of course--I went on with
my mind full of it--but I went on. It didn't check me. I ran past
tugging out my watch, found I had ten minutes still to spare, and
then I was going downhill into familiar surroundings. I got to
school, breathless, it is true, and wet with perspiration, but in
time. I can remember hanging up my coat an