the month. All the
cherry-trees were in full flower; the pear-trees were coming out, and
the young thickets in the garden were bending low with lilac-blossom,
but Peter was miserable.

He was leaning his arms over the balustrade, and the great red peonies
and loose anemones were staring up at him so that he could see down into
their central folds; but what is April, and what is a half-holiday, and
what indeed is life itself when one has lost perhaps the most excellent
top that boy ever spun, and the loudest hummer? And then he had taken
such care of it. Never but once, only this once, had he spun it in the
gallery at all, and yet this once of all misfortunes it had rolled its
last circle out so far that the balustrade had struck it, and in the
leap of its rebound it had sprung over.

At first he felt as if he should like to cry. Then a wild and daring
thought came and shook at the very doors of his heart. What if he
climbed over the gate and got down, and, finding his top, brought it up
so quickly that no one would ever know?

His mother and aunt were gone out for a walk; his great-grandmother and
the nurse were nodding one on each side of the fire. It was only three
o'clock, and yet they had dined, and they were never known to rouse
themselves up for at least half an hour at that time of day.

He took one turn along the gallery again, peeped in at the parlour
window, then in a great hurry he yielded to the temptation, climbed over
the wooden gate, got down the rotten old steps, and in two minutes was
up to his neck in a mass of tangled blossoms. Then he began to feel that
passion of deep delight which is born of adventure and curiosity. He
quite forgot his top: indeed, there was no chance of finding it. He
began to wade about, and got deeper and deeper in. Sometimes quite
over-canopied, he burrowed his way half smothered with flowers;
sometimes emerging, he cast back a stealthy glance to the gallery.

At last he had passed across the lawn, arrived almost at the very end of
the garden, and down among the broken trellis-work of the arbour three
nests of the yellow-hammer were visible at the same time. He did not
know which to lay hands on first. He thought he had never been so happy
in his life, or so much afraid.

But time pressed. He knew now that he should certainly climb over that
gate again, though for the present he did not dare to stay; and
stooping, almost creeping, over the open lawn and the bed of lilies