quite a little bower!" she exclaimed; "as pretty a little
nest as any bird could wish for. And what a lovely view towards the west
and beyond Pebbleridge! One could sit here forever and see the sun set.
But I must have passed it fifty times without the least suspicion of it.
How on earth have you managed to conceal it so? That is to say, if it is
your doing. Surely the children must have found it out, because they go
everywhere."

"One brat did. But I gave him such a scare that he never stopped roaring
till next Sunday, and it frightened all the rest from looking round that
corner. If any other comes, I shall pitch-plaster him, for I could not
endure that noise again. But you see, at a glance, why you have failed
to see it, as we always do with our little oversights, when humbly
pointed out to us. It is the colour of the ground and the background
too, and the grayness of the scanty growth that hides it. Nobody finds
it out by walking across it, because of this swampy place on your side,
and the shoot of flints down from the cliff on the other, all sharp as
a knife, and as rough as a saw. And nobody comes down to this end of the
warren, neither is it seen from the battery on the hill. Only from the
back is it likely to be invaded, and there is nothing to make people
look, or come, up here. So you have me altogether at your mercy, Miss
Darling."

Dolly thought within herself that it was much the other way, but could
not well express her thoughts to that effect. And being of a brisk and
versatile--not to say volatile--order, she went astray into a course of
wonder concerning the pretty little structure she beheld. Structure was
not the proper word for it at all; for it seemed to have grown from the
nature around, with a little aid of human hands to guide it. Branches of
sea-willow radiant with spring, and supple sprays of tamarisk recovering
from the winter, were lightly inwoven and arched together, with the
soft compliance of reed and rush from the marsh close by, and the stout
assistance of hazel rods from the westward cliff. The back was afforded
by a grassy hillock, with a tuft or two of brake-fern throwing up their
bronzy crockets among the sprayed russet of last year's pride. And
beneath them a ledge of firm turf afforded as fair a seat as even two
sweet lovers need desire.

"How clever he is, and how full of fine taste!" thought the
simple-minded Dolly; "and all this time I have been taking him for a
gloomy, hard