In front was a small raised garden, bordered by a very wide ivy-covered stone wall. The house stood on the slope of a steep hill, so that this wall overtopped the road below like a crag. When you leaned your arms on its golden sweet-scented ivy blossom, or sombre berries and smooth leaves, you could look out over a tract of country that spread for miles--green meadows, hazel copses bursting into leaf, thick woods that hid the stream whose rushing waters yet made themselves heard, the reedy reaches of a river, and fir-clad hills that melted faint and blue into a misty horizon. There was a patch of gravel in front of the wall, and a rustic garden seat, dilapidated, but firm enough for occupation. The site made a natural outdoor parlour: a yew tree, grown slantwise with the prevailing wind, formed an umbrella overhead. At the side of the cottage, between the yard and the kitchen garden, purled a shallow little brook, at the edge of which grew watercresses and marsh marigolds. It was spanned by a bridge made of rough slabs of stone. Beyond the stables lay a couple of small meadows, containing an upper reach of the stream, and a little marshy tract interspersed with gorse and alder bushes. The Watson family had reviewed the whole premises slowly, critically, and with unbounded satisfaction. "It's the sort of place you read about in a novel," sighed Daphne, whose tastes were romantic. "Somehow you feel as if anything could happen here--interesting things, I mean. Mysteries and tragedies, and--and even----" "Love affairs!" finished Avelyn promptly. "Perhaps they may--sometime." Avelyn was at the stage when life is full of dreams. It was her constant amusement to imagine all kinds of delightful but wildly improbable future happenings for Daphne, for herself, and for the boys. The number of castles in the air which she constructed would have built a city. They were all shadowy and unsubstantial, but none the less fascinating for that. Walden appeared to her, as to Daphne, an appropriate setting for golden visions. David and Anthony, still in the age of blunt uncompromising frankness, regarded the new home from a practical standpoint. "It's top-hole!" decided David. "I'll have a thingumjig--what d'you call it?--lathe, I mean, inside that cottage, and a joiner's bench. There's a man in the village who says he's got one to sell cheap, and a vice with it. I'm going to make a rabbit hutch, and all sorts of things." "There are trout in that part of the stream up the field," beamed Anthony. "Not very big ones, but certainly trout. I saw them jump. The boy who brought the telegram yesterday told me that he catches them with his hands. He knows of sixteen birds' nests on the road to the station, and he's got a young hedgehog at home. I'm going to just sit and sit in the field when it's getting dark till I see one for myself."