isagreeable incident one day when some
forward girls challenged David's team, and a disturbing creature called
Angela Clare sent down so many yorkers that--However, instead of
telling you the result of that regrettable match I shall pass on
hurriedly to the Round Pond, which is the wheel that keeps all the
gardens going.

[Illustration: The Serpentine is a lovely lake, and there is a drowned
forest at the bottom of it. If you peer over the edge you can see the
trees all growing upside down, and they say that at night there are
also drowned stars in it]

It is round because it is in the very middle of the Gardens, and when
you are come to it you never want to go any farther. You can't be good
all the time at the Round Pond, however much you try. You can be good
in the Broad Walk all the time, but not at the Round Pond, and the
reason is that you forget, and, when you remember, you are so wet that
you may as well be wetter. There are men who sail boats on the Round
Pond, such big boats that they bring them in barrows, and sometimes in
perambulators, and then the baby has to walk. The bow-legged children
in the Gardens are those who had to walk too soon because their father
needed the perambulator.

You always want to have a yacht to sail on the Round Pond, and in the
end your uncle gives you one; and to carry it to the pond the first day
is splendid, also to talk about it to boys who have no uncle is
splendid, but soon you like to leave it at home. For the sweetest
craft that slips her moorings in the Round Pond is what is called a
stick-boat, because she is rather like a stick until she is in the
water and you are holding the string. Then as you walk round, pulling
her, you see little men running about her deck, and sails rise
magically and catch the breeze, and you put in on dirty nights at snug
harbours which are unknown to the lordly yachts. Night passes in a
twink, and again your rakish craft noses for the wind, whales spout,
you glide over buried cities, and have brushes with pirates, and cast
anchor on coral isles. You are a solitary boy while all this is taking
place, for two boys together cannot adventure far upon the Round Pond,
and though you may talk to yourself throughout the voyage, giving
orders and executing them with despatch, you know not, when it is time
to go home, where you have been or what swelled your sails; your
treasure-trove is all locked away in your hold, so to speak, which will
b