She was at the door of the wardrobe before she remembered the kidnapers, and realized that she dared not walk out alone.  But Potter liked the country.  Besides, he knew the way.  She decided to ask him to go with her—­old and stooped though he was.  Perhaps she would also take the pretty nurse-maid at the corner.  And those who were left behind—­Miss Royle and Thomas and Jane—­would all be sorry when she was gone.

But let them fret!  Let them weep, and wish her back!  She—­

That moment she caught sight of the photographs on the writing-desk.  She stood still to look at them.  As she looked, both pictured faces gradually dimmed.  For tears had come at last—­at the thought of leaving father and mother—­quiet tears that flowed in erratic little S’s between gray eyes and trembling mouth.

How could she forsake them?

“Gwendolyn,” she half-whispered, “s’pose we just pu-play the Johnnie Blake Pretend ...  Oh, very well,”—­this last with all of Miss Royle’s precise intonation.

The heavy brocade hangings were the forest trees.  The piano was the mountain, richly inlaid.  The table was the cottage, and she rolled it nearer the dull rose timber at the side window.  The rug was the grassy, flowery glade; its border, the stream that threaded the glade.  Beyond the stream twisted an unpaved and carefully polished road.

The first part of this particular Pretend was the drive to the village—­carved and enameled, and paneled with woven cane.  A hassock did duty for a runabout that had no top to shut out the sun-light, no windows to bar the fragrant air.  In front of the hassock, a pillow did duty as a stout dappled pony.

Her father drove.  And she sat beside him, holding on to the iron bar of the runabout seat with one hand, to a corner of his coat with the other; for not only were the turns sharp but the country road was uneven.  The sun was just rising above the forest, and it warmed her little back.  The fresh breeze caressed her cheeks into crimson, and swirled her hair about the down-sloping rim of her wreath-encircled hat.  That breeze brought with it the perfume of opening flowers, the fragrance exhaled by the trees along the way, the essence of the damp ground stirred by hoof and wheel.  Gwendolyn breathed through nostrils swelled to their widest.

Following the drive to the village came the trip up the stream to trout-pools.  Gwendolyn’s father led the way with basket and reel.  She trotted at his heels.  And beside Gwendolyn trotted Johnnie Blake.

The piano-seat was Johnnie.  His eyes were blue, and full of laughter.  His small nose was as freckled as Jane’s.  His brown hair disposed itself in several rough heaps, as if it had been winnowed by a tiny whirlwind.

“Good-morning,” said Gwendolyn, curtseying.