rchased several yards of white cheese-cloth from which she
fashioned curtains for the living-room windows. She also cleaned the
windows themselves, and Ken did a wondrous amount of scrubbing.

Now, when fire and candle-light shone out in the living room, it looked
indeed like a room in which to live--so thought the Sturgises, who
asked little.

"Come out here, Phil," Ken whispered plucking his sister by the sleeve,
one evening just before supper. Mystified, she followed him out into the
soft April twilight; he drew her away from the door a little and bade
her look back.

There were new green leaves on the little bush by the door-stone; they
gleamed startlingly light in the dusk. A new moon hung beside the
stalwart white chimney--all the house was a mouse-colored shadow against
the darkening sky. The living-room windows showed as orange squares cut
cheerfully from the night. Through the filmy whiteness of the
cheese-cloth curtains, could be seen the fire, the table spread for
supper, the gallant candles, Kirk lying on the hearth, reading.

"Doesn't it look like a place to live in--and to have a nice time in?"
Ken asked.

"Oh," Felicia said, "it almost does!"

CHAPTER VI

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HEDGE

The civilized-looking hedge had been long since investigated. The plot
of land it enclosed--reached, for the Sturgises, through a breach in the
hedge--was very different from the wild country which surrounded it. The
place had once been a very beautiful garden, but years and neglect had
made of it a half-formal wilderness, fascinating in its over-grown
beauty and its hint of earlier glory. For Kirk, it was an enchanted land
of close-pressing leafy alleys, pungent with the smell of box; of
brick-paved paths chanced on unexpectedly--followed cautiously to the
rim of empty, stone-coped pools. He and Felicia, or he and Ken, went
there when cookery or carpentry left an elder free. For when they had
discovered that the tall old house, though by no means so neglected as
the garden, was as empty, they ventured often into the place. Kirk
invented endless tales of enchanted castles, and peopled the still
lawns and deserted alleys with every hero he had ever read or heard of.
Who could tell? They might indeed lurk in the silent tangle--invisible
to him only as all else was invisible. So he liked to think, and
wandered, rapt, up and down the grass-grown paths of this enchanting
play-ground.

It was not far to the hedg