Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/183

 boy followed us up and discovered our places, but this proves he don't," she announced, as the last crumb disappeared; "he's not so smart as he thinks he is, is he, Henry D.?"

They trotted on, moving more quickly as the faint, regular crash of an axe on wood came nearer and nearer. A barbed-wire fence had sprung up unaccountably in the wood, following a devious course among the thick trees, and as they scrambled carefully under it, Henry D. pausing with accustomed gallantry while his mistress disentangled two petticoats and an unfortunate stocking, a little gray-shingled cottage jumped out suddenly from the gray beeches, and they emerged into its front yard.

It was a ridiculously operatic little cottage, composed chiefly of bulging balconies, scarlet and yellow with geraniums and nasturtiums, casement windows with tiny leaded panes, and double Dutch doors, evidently practicable. It had all the air of having retired from the other scenery to practice for its own act, and it seemed highly probable that a chorus of happy short-skirted peasantry would skip out from behind