darling; a very pleasant garden; all
grass and daisies, and apple-trees, and narrow patches with flowers and
fruit-trees one side, and a wall and currant-bushes another side, and a
low box-hedge and a haha, where you can see the high mowing grass quite
underneath you; and a round summer-house in the corner, painted as blue
inside as a hedge-sparrow's egg is outside; and then another haha with
iron railings, which you are always climbing up, Bevis, on the fourth
side, with stone steps leading down to a meadow, where the cows are
feeding, and where they have left all the buttercups standing as tall
as your waist, sir. The gate in the iron railings is not fastened, and
besides, there is a gap in the box-hedge, and it is easy to drop down
the haha wall, but that is mowing grass there. You know very well you
could not come to any harm in the meadow; they said you were not to go
outside the garden, but that's all nonsense, and very stupid. _I_ am
going outside the garden, Bevis. Good-morning, dear." Buzz! And the
great bumble-bee flew slowly between the iron railings, out among the
buttercups, and away up the field.

Bevis went to the railings, and stood on the lowest bar; then he opened
the gate a little way, but it squeaked so loud upon its rusty hinges
that he let it shut again. He walked round the garden along beside the
box-hedge to the patch by the lilac trees; they were single lilacs,
which are much more beautiful than the double, and all bowed down with a
mass of bloom. Some rhubarb grew there, and to bring it up the faster,
they had put a round wooden box on it, hollowed out from the sawn butt
of an elm, which was rotten within and easily scooped. The top was
covered with an old board, and every time that Bevis passed he lifted up
the corner of the board and peeped in, to see if the large red, swelling
knobs were yet bursting.

One of these round wooden boxes had been split and spoilt, and half of
it was left lying with the hollow part downwards. Under this shelter a
toad had his house. Bevis peered in at him, and touched him with a twig
to make him move an inch or two, for he was so lazy, and sat there all
day long, except when it rained. Sometimes the toad told him a story,
but not very often, for he was a silent old philosopher, and not very
fond of anybody. He had a nephew, quite a lively young fellow, in the
cucumber frame on the other side of the lilac bushes, at whom Bevis also
peered nearly every day after t