cess of the enchanted garden was none other than my little girl
of the evening before. She was playing quietly by herself in a bower of
box, building small houses of moss and stones, which she erected with
infinite patience. So engrossed was she in her play that she seemed
perfectly oblivious of the fading light and of the birds and squirrels
that ran past her to their homes in the latticed arbours. Higher and
higher rose her houses of moss and stones, while she knelt there,
patient and silent, in the terrace walk with the small, yellow leaves
falling around her.

"That's a square deal now," said President, dropping me suddenly to
earth. "You'd better come along and trot home or you'll get a lamming."

My enchanted garden had vanished, the spiked wall rose over my head, and
before me, as I turned homeward, spread all the familiar commonplaceness
of Church Hill.

"How long will it be befo' I can climb up by myself?" I asked.

"When you grow up. You're nothin' but a kid."

"An' when'll I grow up if I keep on fast?"

"Oh, in ten or fifteen years, I reckon."

"Shan't I be big enough to climb up befo' then?"

"Look here, you shut up! I'm tired answerin' questions," shouted my
elder brother, and grasping his hand I trotted in a depressed silence
back to our little home.

CHAPTER III

A PAIR OF RED SHOES

I awoke the next morning a changed creature from the one who had fallen
asleep in my trundle-bed. In a single hour I had awakened to the sharp
sense of contrast, to the knowledge that all ways of life were not
confined to the sordid circle in which I lived. Outside the poverty, the
ugliness, the narrow streets, rose the spiked wall of the enchanted
garden; and when I shut my eyes tight, I could see still the half-bared
elms arching against the sunset, and the old house beyond, with its
stuccoed wings and its grave white columns, which looked down on the
magnolias and laburnums just emerging from the twilight on the lower
terrace. In the midst of this garden I saw always the little girl
patiently building her houses of moss and stones, and it seemed to me
that I could hardly live through the days until I grew strong enough to
leap the barriers and play beside her in the bower of box.

"Ma," I asked, measuring myself against the red and white cloth on the
table, "does it look to you as if I were growin' up?"

The air was strong with the odour of frying bacon, and when my mother
turned to answer me, she h