“I should like to get into the garden,” said John Mortimer; “here’s a door.”

“But it’s locked,” remarked Valentine, “and Mrs. Peter Melcombe told me yesterday that none of them ever walked in it.”

“Ah, indeed!” said John carelessly—­he was far from giving a literal meaning to the information.  “It looks a rotten old thing,” he continued; “the key is in the house, no doubt, but I don’t want to have the trouble of going in to ask for it.”

“Perhaps it’s not locked,” said Valentine; “perhaps it only wants a push.”

John and Valentine were standing among some cherry-trees, which, being thickly laden with their blossom, screened them from observation as far as the windows of the now opened house were concerned.  John did push, and when the door creaked he pushed again, and the rotten old lock yielded, came away from the lintel, and as the two old fathers turned, they were just in time to see their sons disappear through the doorway and walk into the garden.  With a troubled glance at one another, and an effort not to appear in haste, the fathers followed them.

“Can’t we get them away?” exclaimed Mr. Mortimer; “can’t we tell them to come out?”

“Certainly not, certainly not, brother,” answered old Augustus, in a reassuring tone.  “You’ll not say a word to dissuade them from going wherever they please.”

“No,” said the other, in a nervous, hesitating manner.  “You’re quite right, Augustus; you always are.”

“Is it not a strange place?” exclaimed John, as they walked forward and looked about them.  “It seems to me that really and truly they never do enter it.”

“Well, I told you so,” answered Valentine.  “It is on account of the eldest son.  Miss Melcombe told me that he was a very eccentric character, and for many years before his death he made gardening his one occupation.  He never suffered any one but himself to garden here, not even so much as to mow the grass.  After he was dead the poor old grandmother locked it up.  She didn’t like any one else to meddle with it.”

“Why, he was dead before I was born,” exclaimed John, “and I am two-and-thirty.  Poor soul! and she never got over that misfortune, then, in all those years.  There’s a grand pear-tree! lots of rotten fruit lying under it—­and what a fine apple-tree!  Is this of the celebrated ‘redstreak’ variety, I wonder, that Phillips praises so in his poem on cider.”

“A poem on cider!”

“Yes, I tell you, a poem on cider, and as long as ‘Paradise Lost.’  It has some very fine passages in it, and has actually been translated into Italian.  I picked up a copy of it at Verona when I was a boy, and learned a good deal of it by heart, by way of helping myself with the language.  I remember some of it to this day:—­

     “’Voi, donne, e Cavalier del bel paese
     A cui propizio il ciel tanto concesse
     Di bene, udite il mio cantare,’ &c., &c.