But Regie adhered to his determination, and to the “shrubberies” they went.  Hester was too tired to play with them, too tired even to tell them a story; so she sat under a tree while they circled in the coppice near at hand.

As we grow older we realize that in the new gardens where life leads us we never learn the shrubs and trees by heart as we did as children in our old Garden of Eden, round the little gabled house where we were born.  We were so thorough as children.  We knew the underneath of every laurel-bush, the shape of its bunches of darkling branches, the green dust that our small restless bodies rubbed off from its under twigs.  We see now as strangers those little hanging horse-tails of pink, which sad-faced elders call ribes; but once long ago, when the world was young, we knew them eye to eye, and the compact little black insects on them, and the quaint taste of them, and the clean, clean smell of them.  Everything had a taste in those days, and was submitted to that test, just as until it had been licked the real color of any object of interest was not ascertained.  There was a certain scarlet berry, very red without and very white within, which we were warned was deadly poison.  How well, after a quarter of a century, we remember the bitter taste of it; how much better than many other forbidden fruits duly essayed in later years.  We ate those scarlet berries and lived, though warned to the contrary.

Presently Boulou, who could do nothing simply, found a dead mouse, where any one else could have found it, in the middle of the path, and made it an occasion for a theatrical display of growlings and shakings.  The children decided to bury it, and after a becoming silence their voices could be heard singing “Home, Sweet Home,” as the body was being lowered into the grave previously dug by Boulou, who had to be forcibly restrained from going on digging it after the obsequies were over.

“He never knows when to stop,” said Regie, wearily, as Boulou, with a little plaster of earth on his nose, was carried coughing back to Hester.

As she took him Rachel and Sybell came slowly down the path towards them, and the latter greeted Hester with an effusion which suggested that when two is not company three may be.

“A most vexing thing has happened,” said Sybell, in a gratified tone, sitting down under Hester’s tree.  “I really don’t think I am to blame.  You know Mr. Tristram, the charming artist who has been staying with us?”

“I know him,” said Hester.

“Well, he was set on making a sketch of me for one of his large pictures, and it was to have been finished to-day.  I don’t see any harm myself in drawing on Sunday.  I know the Gresleys do, and I love the Gresleys, he has such a powerful mind; but one must think for one’s self, and it was only the upper lip, so I consented to sit for him at four o’clock.  I noticed he seemed a little—­well rather—­”