is the sort of house I’ve always dreamed of when it said luxury—in books, you know.’
‘Me too,’ said Charlotte.
‘And me,’ said Charles.
Chapter III.
The Wonderful Garden
It was very glorious to wake up the next morning in enormous soft beds—four-posted, with many-folded silk hangings, and shiny furniture that reflected the sunlight as dark mirrors might do. And breakfast was nice, with different sorts of things to eat, in silver dishes with spirit-lamps under them,—bacon and sausages and scrambled eggs, and as much toast and marmalade as you wanted; not just porridge and apples, as at Aunt Emmeline’s. There were tea and coffee and hot milk. They all chose hot milk.
‘I feel,’ said Caroline, pouring it out of a big silver jug with little bits of ivory between the handle and the jug to keep the handle from getting too hot, ‘I feel that we’re going to enjoy every second of the time we’re here.’
‘Rather,’ said Charles, through sausage. ‘Isn’t Uncle Charles a dear,’ he added more distinctly. ‘I dreamed about him last night—that he painted his face out of the paint-box I gave Caro, and then we blew him out with the bellows to make him fatter.’
‘And did it?’ Caroline asked.
‘He burst,’ said Charles briefly, ‘and turned into showers of dead leaves.’
There was an interval of contented silence. Then—
‘What shall we do first?’ said Charles. And his sisters with one voice answered, ‘Explore, of course.’
And they finished their breakfast to dreams of exploring every hole and corner of the wonderful house.
But when they rang to have breakfast taken away it was Mrs. Wilmington who appeared.
‘Your uncle desired me to say that he thinks it’s healthy for you to spend some hours in the hopen—open air,’ she said, speaking in a small distinct voice. ‘He himself takes the air of an afternoon. So will you please all go out at once,’ she ended in a burst of naturalness, ‘and not come ’ome, home, till one o’clock.’
‘Where are we to go?’ asked Charlotte, not pleased.
‘Not beyond the park and grounds,’ said the housekeeper. ‘And,’ she added reluctantly, ‘Mr. Charles said if there was any pudding you liked to mention——’
A brief consultation ended in, ‘Treacle hat, please’; and when Mrs. Wilmington had minced off, they turned to each other and said:
‘The brick!’
‘The old duck!’ and
‘Something like an uncle.’
Then they went out, as they had been told to do. And they took off their shoes and stockings, which they had not been told to do—but, on the other hand, had not been told not to—and walked barefooted in the grass still cool and dewy under the trees. And they put on their boots again and explored the park, and explored the stable-yard, where a groom was rubbing bright the silver buckles of the harness and whistling as he rubbed. They explored the stables and the harness-room and the straw-loft and the hay-loft. And then they went back to the park and climbed trees—a little way, because though they had always known that they would climb trees if ever they had half a chance, they had not, till now, had any chance at all.
And all the while they were doing all this they were looking—at the back of their minds, even when they weren’t doing it with the part you think with—for the garden.
And there wasn’t any garden!
That was the plain fact that they had to face after two hours of sunshine and green out-of-doors.
‘And I’m certain mother said there was a garden,’ Caroline said, sitting down suddenly on the grass; ‘a beautiful garden and a terrace.’
‘Perhaps the Uncle didn’t like it, and he’s had it made not garden again—“Going back to Nature” that would be, like Aunt Emmeline talks about,’ Charles suggested.
‘And it’s dreadful if there’s no garden,’ said Caroline, ‘because of the flowers we were going to send in letters. Wild flowers don’t have such deep meanings, I’m certain.’
‘And besides we haven’t seen any wild flowers,’ said Caroline. ‘Oh, bother!’
‘Never mind,’ Charles said, ‘think of exploring the house—and finding the book, perhaps. We’ll ask the Elegant One, when we go in, why there isn’t a garden.’
‘We won’t wait till then,’ said Charlotte; ‘let’s go and ask that jolly man who’s polishing the harness. He looked as if he wouldn’t mind us talking to him.’
‘It was him drove us yesterday,’ Charles pointed out.
So they went as to an old friend. And when they asked William why there wasn’t a garden he answered surprisingly and rather indignantly:
‘Ain’t they shown you, Miss? Not a garden? There ain’t a garden to beat it hereabouts. Come on, I’ll show you.’
And, still more surprisingly, he led the way to the back door.
‘We aren’t to go indoors till dinner-time,’ said Caroline; ‘and besides, we should like to see the garden—if there really is one.’
‘Of course there is one, Miss,’ said William. ‘She’ll never see you if you’re quick. She’ll be in her room by now—at her accounts and things. And the Master’s never about in these back parts in the morning.’
‘I suppose it’s a lock-up garden and he’s going to get the key,’ said Charles in a whisper. But William wasn’t.
He led them into a whitewashed passage that had cupboards and larders opening out of it and ended in a green baize door. He opened this, and there they were in the hall.
‘Quick,’ he said, and crossed it, unlatched another door and held it open. ‘Come in quiet,’ he said, and closed the door again. And there they all were in a little square room with a stone staircase going down the very middle of it, like a well. There was a wooden railing round three sides of the stairway, and nothing else in the room at all, except William and the children.
‘A secret staircase,’ said Charlotte. ‘Oh, it can’t be, really. How lovely!’
‘I daresay it was a secret once,’ said William, striking a match and lighting a candle that stood at the top of the stairs in a brass candlestick. ‘You see there wasn’t always these banisters, and you can see that ridge along the wall. My grandfather says it used to be boarded over and that’s where the joists went. They’d have a trap-door or something over the stairway, I shouldn’t be surprised.’
‘But
