Page:E Nesbit - Man and Maid (1906).djvu/22

 there was a tablet in the church to Maria Sefton and George Ballard—“and something about in their death them not being divided.”

I took the stile, I skirted the wood, I “catered” across the meadow—and so I came out on a chalky ridge held in a net of pine roots, where dog violets grew. Below stretched the green park, dotted with trees. The lodge, stuccoed but solid, lay below me. Smoke came from its chimneys. Lower still lay the Manor House—red brick with grey lichened mullions, a house in a thousand, Elizabethan—and from its twisted beautiful chimneys no smoke arose. I hurried across the short turf towards the Manor House.

I had no difficulty in getting into the great garden. The bricks of the wall were everywhere displaced or crumbling. The ivy had forced the coping stones away; each red buttress offered a dozen spots for foothold. I climbed the wall and found myself in a garden—oh! but such a garden. There are not half a dozen such in England—ancient box hedges, rosaries, fountains, yew tree avenues, bowers of clematis (now feathery in its seeding time), great trees, grey-grown marble balustrades and steps, terraces, green lawns, one green lawn, in especial, girt round