Page:A child of the Orient (IA childoforient00vakarich).pdf/180

 greatest ingenuity, not for the fruit, but for the colour scheme in blossom time.

At the end of our orchard there was a drop of about eight feet, and there began the garden surrounding the house where our proprietess lived. It must have comprised a hundred acres, and ended at the sea. It was not cultivated, like the other properties, but was mostly woodland, with flowers in the clearings. What I could see of it fascinated and attracted me. I had an idea that if I could penetrate into that garden I should surprise the spirits of the flowers and trees, who, thinking themselves protected from human intrusion, must come forth from their earthly shells to parade under their own shadow.

We had been in our new, old house for two weeks, and when I was neither reading nor climbing the trees I was scheming how to get into the garden. In all my reconnoitring I had never seen or heard a human being in that garden below, and if I had not known that people lived there I should have thought the property abandoned.

My mother went away for the week-end. It was early afternoon, and the entire universe was at siesta. I chose that hour to make a still closer search for a means of getting down those eight feet, to roam the beckoning garden. If discovered, of course, I should have to pretend that I had fallen in accidentally.