Page:Oswald Bastable and Others - Nesbit.djvu/117

Rh we asked an old man, and he did say it was in, so no one can live in it.'

H. O. asked what was enchancery.

'I'm certain the old man meant enchanted,' said Noël, 'only I expect that's the old-fashioned word for it. Enchanceried is a very nice word. And it means it's an enchanted house, just like I said.'

Nurse now came out to remark, 'Tea, my dears,' so we left the Saracens' tower and went in to that meal.

Noël began to make a poem called 'The Enchanceried House,' but we got him to stop till there was more for him to write about. There soon was more, and more than enough, as it turned out.

The setting sun had set, but it had left a redness in the sky (like one of those distant fires that you go after, and they are always miles from where you are) which shone through the pine-trees. The house looked black and mysterious against the strawberry-ice-coloured horizon.

It was a good-sized house. The bottom-floor windows were boarded up. It had a Sensitive-Plantish garden and a paved yard and outhouses. The garden had a high wall with glass on top,