ne bush when I dropped asleep, and
when I awoke he was cheeping there still. Of my dreams I only
remember that they ended in a vague sense of discomfort, somehow
arising from a vision of Mr. Rogers in the act of throwing bread at
the swans, and of the hen bird's flurry as she paddled away. But the
sound which I took for the splashing of water came in fact from the
rings of the window curtain, which Miss Isabel was drawing to shut
out the high morning sun.

She heard me stir and faced about, with her hand yet on the curtain.
"Awake?" she cried, and laughed. "You shall have a basin of
bread-and-milk presently: and after that you may get up and put on
these." She held out a suit of clothes which lay across her arm.
"I have borrowed them from Miss Belcher, who distributes all sorts of
garments at Christmas among the youngsters hereabouts, and has
rummaged this out of her stock. And after that my father will be
glad to make your acquaintance. We shall find him in the garden.
Now I must go and see to preparing dinner: for it is past noon,
though you may not know it."

Behold me, half an hour later, clad in a blue jacket very tight at
the elbows and corduroy breeches very tight at the knees and warm for
the time of year, as I descended with Isabel into the walled garden
at the back of the cottage. Its whole area cannot have been an acre,
and even so the half of it was taken up by a plot of turf, smooth as
a bowling green: but beyond this stretched a miniature orchard, and
along the walls ran two deep borders crowded with midsummer flowers--
tall white lilies and Canterbury bells; stocks, sweet williams,
mignonette, candytuft and larkspurs; bushes of lemon verbena, myrtle,
and the white everlasting pea. Near the house all was kept in
nicest order, with trim ranks of standard roses marching level with
the turfed verges, and tall carnations staked and bending towards
them across the alley: but around the orchard all grew riotous.
The orchard ended in a maze of currant bushes, through which the path
seemed to wander after the sound of running water till it emerged
upon another clearing of turf, with a tall filbert tree, and a
summer-house beneath it, and a row of beehives set beside a stream.
The stream, I afterwards learned, came down from Miss Belcher's park,
and was the real boundary of the garden: but Miss Belcher had allowed
the Major to build a wall for privacy, on the far side of it, yet not
so high as to shut of