I was charmed with these fancies, but I stood there only a few minutes, for there was something odd in that silence of closed doors and listening portraits, and I returned to the sunshine of my room. I went to the window and leaned my forehead against the pane and looked out. Far away I could see a stretch of sand, streaked with streams and pools of water, for the tide was out: and beyond the sand, clear in the sunlight, was the sea, blue-green under the soft blue sky, marked with indigo and purple where the bottom was formed of rocks and seaweed. At the water’s edge some children――from this distance I could not make out who they were――were sailing toy boats. With trousers and petticoats well rolled up from bare brown legs, with their scarlet jerseys and caps and striped cotton dresses, they formed a bright note of colour, and brought me into touch again with life out of doors. On the left horn of the bay’s crescent the sand-hills, with their sparse covering of bleached, wan grass, were pale and iridescent in the sun. A gardener was mowing the grass just below my window, and the sleepy sound of the mowing-machine was delightful, and the smell of the fresh green grass, turned over in bright cool heaps. I got back into bed again, and took up “Bevis.” I read for half an hour, when my eyes once more grew tired. The sound of the mowing-machine had ceased, and a deep silence filled the afternoon. I lay listening to the silence, half-asleep, half-awake, when all at once I heard a sound of scraping under my window. It flashed across my mind that I was alone here in this part of the house, and that burglars were taking the opportunity to break in, and perhaps they would murder me. The thing was utterly nonsensical, and would never have occurred to me had I been in my normal health, but it had hardly entered my head when I saw a ladder shoot up past the window, and strike with a grating sound against the wall. My heart began to thump. I heard steps on the ladder; somebody was mounting it. The next moment Jim’s face, brown and ruddy and grinning, popped in, and I gasped with relief. Jim was a boy who worked in the garden, and was about the same age as I was. He smiled broadly, and his bright, brown eyes gazed at me with evident pleasure. “How are you, Master Peter?” he grinned. “They’re nobody about, so I thought I’d look in.” “Oh, I’m all right,” I answered, “but you mustn’t stay there, or you’ll be catching the infection.” “I wanted to see the skin peeling off you. What like is it underneath?” I felt disappointed at this callous explanation of what I had imagined to be sympathy. “You can’t see it,” I answered crossly. “You’d better clear out before somebody catches you.” Jim disappeared, but I called after him, “I say ... Jim――――” The round, ruddy-brown face bobbed up again. “Will you do something for me?” I asked. “Ay.” “Will you play something to me. I’m sick of lying here, doing nothing.”