Page:Avon Fantasy Reader 05.djvu/34

RV 34 (Rh) There, in a stockade composed of trunks and portmanteaux, sat Janey surrounded by her dolls.

Her face was wreathed in smiles. On her lap sat Eric, at her feet lay Rose in the well-known state of trance.

"So this is the way you spend your afternoons!" I said. "I wonder what your aunt would say if she knew." "Oh, please don't tell her, uncle!" Janey replied. "And whatever happens, don't tell Sambo!"

Until she spoke, I had not noticed the absence of that individual. On inquiry it seemed that Sambo had been left fast asleep in the garden. I raised the heavy attic window and looked out. Yes, there he was sitting propped up on the garden seat looking up at us with eyes that seemed to me very wide awake.

"I'm afraid he knows where we are!" said Janey, "he is so very clever."

Of course I said nothing to Mary of what went on upstairs. There was less need to, as Janey's visits to her banished family very soon ceased. It was my belief that Sambo had put a stop to them. Of what happened behind the raspberry canes I very seldom speak. I never told Mary, who being entirely without imagination would have believed that I was either lying or Janey mad.

The afternoon had been more than usually close. Mary was cross, Janey was listless, and I sleepy. I had as usual ensconced myself in the shady corner of the kitchen garden where the maid never thinks of looking when she comes to announce callers, and where I not infrequently surprise school children in search of our blackbirds' nests. I was awakened from my nap by the accustomed sound of someone in the raspberry canes.

In among the brown sticks, I caught sight of a white dress. I bent low and followed. Janey was some fifteen yards ahead of me. In her arms she was clasping a doll. She was sobbing bitterly.

Through the raspberry canes I followed her—along a little track that had not been there a fortnight before, over an open space which in autumn was trenched for celery, past the deserted graveyard where generations of cats and dogs had been laid to rest, to the very end of the long garden.

It was a deserted place given over to rubbish, broken flower pots, piles of old pea-sticks, and mounds of yellow rotting grass cut from the lawns last summer. I hid myself behind a turf stack and watched.

On a chair that Arthur had given Janey three birthdays ago sat Sambo, wearing his usual expression of utter vacuity. About a yard in front of him was a pile of straw and dried twigs; within reach was the silver matchbox