107

ILLUSTRATIONS

"It was one thin web of rose and gold over lakes of
burnished light...."

PART ONE

IN WHICH PETER
MEETS A DRAGON, AND
THE LOVELY LADY
MAKES HER APPEARANCE

PART ONE

IN WHICH PETER MEETS A DRAGON, AND THE
LOVELY LADY MAKES HER APPEARANCE

I

The walls of the Wonderful House rose up straight and shining, pale
greenish gold as the slant sunlight on the orchard grass under the apple
trees; the windows that sprang arching to the summer blueness let in the
scent of the cluster rose at the turn of the fence, beginning to rise
above the dusty smell of the country roads, and the evening clamour of
the birds in Bloombury wood. As it dimmed and withdrew, the shining of
the walls came out more clearly. Peter saw then that they were all of
coloured pictures wrought flat upon the gold, and as the glow of it
increased they began to swell and stir like a wood waking. They leaned
out from the walls, looking all one way toward the increasing light and
tap-tap of the Princess' feet along the halls.

"Peter, oh, Peter!"

The tap-tapping grew sharp and nearer like the sound of a crutch on a
wooden veranda, and the voice was Ellen's.

"Oh, Peter, you are always a-reading and a-reading!"

Peter rolled off the long settle where he had been stretched and put the
book in his pocket apologetically.

"I was just going to quit," he said; "did you want anything, Ellen?"

"The picnic is coming back; I thought we could go down to the turn to
meet them. Mrs. Sibley said she would save me some things from the
luncheon."

If there was a little sting to Peter in Ellen's eagerness, it was
evidence at least, how completely he and his mother had kept her from
realizing that it was chiefly because of their not being able to afford
the well-filled basket demanded by a Bloombury picnic that they had not
accepted the invitation. Ellen had thought it was because Bet, the mare,
could not be spared all day from the ploughing nor Peter from hoeing
the garden, and her mother was too busy with the plaid gingham dress she
was making for the minister's wife, to do any baking. It meant to Ellen,
the broken fragments of the luncheon, just so much of what a picnic
should mean: the ride in the dusty morning, swings under the trees, easy
games that she could play, lemonade, pails and pails of it, pink ham
sandwiches and frosted cake; and if Ellen could have any of these, she
was having a little piec