“My darling, you frightened me so.  I thought you’d hurt yourself.”

“I don’t know how my voice came big like that,” said Mark apologetically.  “I only meant it to be a whisper.  But you weren’t dreadfully frightened?  Or were you?”

His mother smiled.

“No, not dreadfully frightened.”

“Well, do you think I might dress myself and go in the garden?”

“You mustn’t disturb grandfather.”

“Oh, mother, of course not.”

“All right, darling.  But it’s only six o’clock.  Very early.  And you must remember that grandfather may be tired.  He had to wait an hour for us at Rosemarket last night.”

“He’s very nice, isn’t he?”

Mark did not ask this tentatively; he really did think that his grandfather was very nice, although he had been puzzled and not a little frightened by his bushy black eyebrows slanting up to a profusion of white hair.  Mark had never seen such eyebrows, and he wondered whatever grandfather’s moustache would be like if it were allowed to grow.

“He’s a dear,” said Mrs. Lidderdale fervidly.  “And now, sweetheart, if you really intend to dress yourself run along, because Mother wants to sleep a little longer if she can.”

The only difficulty Mark had was with his flannel front, because one of the tapes vanished like a worm into its hole, and nothing in his armoury was at once long enough and pointed enough to hook it out again.  Finally he decided that at such an early hour of the morning it would not matter if he went out exposing his vest, and soon he was wandering in that enchanted shrubbery of rhododendrons, alternating between imagining it to be the cave of Aladdin or the beach where Sinbad found all the pebbles to be precious stones.  He wandered down hill through the thicket, listening with a sense of satisfaction to the increasing squelchiness of the peaty soil and feeling when the blackbirds fled at his approach with shrill quack and flapping wings much more like a hunter than he ever felt in the nursery at Lima Street.  He resolved to bring his gun with him next time.  This was just the place to find a hippopotamus, or even a crocodile.  Mark had reached the bottom of the slope and discovered a dark sluggish stream full of decayed vegetable matter which was slowly oozing on its course.  Or even a crocodile, he thought again; and he looked carefully at a half-submerged log.  Or even a crocodile . . . yes, but people had often thought before that logs were not crocodiles and had not discovered their mistake until they were half way down the crocodile’s throat.  It had been amusing to fancy the existence of crocodiles when he was still close to the Vicarage, but suppose after all that there really were crocodiles living down here?  Feeling a little ashamed of his cowardice, but glossing it over with an assumption of filial piety, Mark turned to go back through the rhododendrons so as not to be late for breakfast.