Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/260

 trees that followed the inside line Of the iron fence, she beheld the palace, high on a terraced knoll. It was of clean-cut gray stone, rising into a square tower at one corner, from which the flag drooped in bright folds of red and blue. The windows shone like mirrors; trim, striped awnings broke the severe angles of the long building; brilliant flower-beds gleamed from the smooth turf and bordered the neat walks of crushed gray stone. It stood massively above its terraces, a very castle of romance to Caroline, who had never before seen it so polished and beflagged. Wonderingly she tried the great wrought-iron gate, but it was securely locked, and a new sign was attached to it:

PRIVATE PROPERTY!

All Trespassers are Warned

From the Premises!

Visitors Please Ring at the Lodge.

Caroline stared at it vaguely. So delicate are the oscillations of the imaginative imp, that it is hard to say just where he swings his slaves into determined self-delusion. If you had shaken Caroline severely and demanded of her in the character of