“. . . birds I see That sing aloud from every tree. . . .” But when she reached the dining-room she stopped singing, her face changed; it became gloomy and sullen. “One may as well rot here as anywhere else,” she muttered savagely, digging the stiff brass safety-pins into the red serge curtains. The two left in the kitchen were quiet for a little. Linda leaned her cheek on her fingers and watched her mother. She thought her mother looked wonderfully beautiful with her back to the leafy window. There was something comforting in the sight of her that Linda felt she could never do without. She needed the sweet smell of her flesh, and the soft feel of her cheeks and her arms and shoulders still softer. She loved the way her hair curled, silver at her forehead, lighter at her neck, and bright brown still in the big coil under the muslin cap. Exquisite were her mother’s hands, and the two rings she wore seemed to melt into her creamy skin. And she was always so fresh, so delicious. The old woman could bear nothing but linen next to her body and she bathed in cold water winter and summer. “Isn’t there anything for me to do?” asked Linda. “No, darling. I wish you would go into the garden and give an eye to your children; but that I know you will not do.” “Of course I will, but you know Isabel is much more grown up than any of us.” “Yes, but Kezia is not,” said Mrs. Fairfield. “Oh, Kezia has been tossed by a bull hours ago,” said Linda, winding herself up in her shawl again. But no, Kezia had seen a bull through a hole in a knot of wood in the paling that separated the tennis lawn from the paddock. But she had not liked the bull frightfully, so she had walked away back through the orchard, up the grassy slope, along the path by the lace bark tree and so into the spread tangled garden. She did not believe that she would ever not get lost in this garden. Twice she had found her way back to the big iron gates they had driven through the night before, and then had turned to walk up the drive that led to the house, but there were so many little paths on either side. On one side they all led into a tangle of tall dark trees and strange bushes with flat velvet leaves and feathery cream flowers that buzzed with flies when you shook them—this was the frightening side, and no garden at all. The little paths here were wet and clayey with tree roots spanned across them like the marks of big fowls’ feet.