garden below was one of many in a row. Old
discoloured walls divided them from each other and from the gardens of a
parallel block of bigger houses, whose slates and chimneys towered above
the intervening trees. The street in front of those houses was completely
hidden, but the hum of its traffic travelled pleasantly to the ear, and
there were other reassuring sights and sounds. In one of the contiguous
gardens a very small boy was wheeling a doll's perambulator; on the other
side, where the fine, warm gravel reminded Pocket of the carroty kind at
home, a man was mowing an equally trim lawn. Pocket listened to the
murmur of the machine, and watched the green spray playing over the
revolving knives, and savoured the curiously countrified smell of cut
grass; the combined effect was a still stronger reminiscence of his
father's garden, where his own old pony pulled the machine in leather
shoes.

Because such associations filled his eyes again, there seemed no end to
them. Somebody was playing the piano near some open window, and playing
almost as well as Lettice did, and playing one of her things! Pocket
could not bear to listen or look out any longer, and he dressed as quietly
as he could. He had almost resolved to slip out without a word, whatever
else he did, if the opportunity offered. It simply never occurred to him,
until he made the discovery, that anybody would dare to lock him in his
room!

Yet they had done it; that infernal old German doctor had had the cheek to
do it; and the effect on the boy, who so expressed the situation to
himself, was rather remarkable. A wholly ineffectual tug or two told him
he was on the wrong side of the door for applying mere bodily strength,
that either he must raise an ignominious shout for freedom or else achieve
it for himself by way of the window. Unathletic as he always had been, he
was sportsman enough not to hesitate an instant between the two
alternatives; and on again looking out of the window, saw his way down at
a glance.

Immediately underneath was another window, opening on a leaded balcony
over the bow-window in the drawing-room. To shift his bedstead with the
least possible noise, to tie a sheet to it, and to slide down the sheet
till he had but a few feet to drop into the balcony, was the work of a
very few minutes to one as excitedly determined as Pocket had become on
finding himself a prisoner. Thought they would lock him in, did they?
They would ju