and walked up a pleached alley of withies woven and interarched.
Over them September roses bloomed with fawn and ivory and copper and
salmon-pink buds and blossoms. At the end of the pleached alley was a
mulberry tree with a seat round its trunk and a thick lawn that ran
right up to the house itself. On the lawn Nancy and Michael played
quoits and bowls and chased Ambrose the spaniel, until the sun sent
still more slanting shadows across the garden and it was possible to
feel that night was just behind the hill beyond the stream. The sun went
down. The air grew chilly and Miss Carthew appeared from the door,
beckoning to Michael. She sat with him in the dusky dining-room while he
ate his bread and milk, and told him of her brother the midshipman,
while he looked pensively at the picture of the Death of Nelson. Then
Michael went to the drawing-room where all the sisters and Mrs. Carthew
herself were sitting. He kissed everybody good night in turn, and Mrs.
Carthew put on a pair of spectacles in order to follow his exit from the
room with a kindly smile. Miss Carthew sat with him while he undressed,
and when he was in bed, she told him another story and kissed him good
night and blew out the candle, and before the sound of pleasant voices
coming upstairs from the supper-table had ceased, Michael was fast
asleep.

In the morning while he was lying watching the shadows on the ceiling,
Nancy's freckled face appeared round the door.

"Hurry up and dress," she cried. "Fishing!"

Michael had never dressed so quickly before. In fact when he was ready,
he had to wait for Nancy who had called him before she had dressed
herself. Nancy and Michael lived a lifetime of delight in that golden
hour of waiting for breakfast.

However, at Cobble Place every minute was a lifetime of delight to
Michael. He forgot all about everything except being happy. His
embarrassment with regard to the correct way of addressing May and Joan
was terminated by being told to call them May and Joan. He was shown the
treasures of their bedrooms, the butterfly collections, the sword of
Captain Carthew, the dirk of their brother the midshipman, the birds'
eggs, the fossils, the bones, the dried flowers, the photographs, the
autographs, in fact everything that was most absorbing to look at. With
Mrs. Carthew he took sedate walks into the village, and held the flowers
while she decorated the altar in church, and sat with her while she
talked to bed-ridden ol