She stared at him with those big grey eyes, Hugh said, so that he began to feel weak, just weak with meanness. And then she said “Yow!” and wept. Well! She wept. Hugh didn’t know what to do, stuck up there on a branch of a tree and this kid crying fit to break her kid’s heart. He kept muttering, “I say, I’m sorry,” and things like that, and then he found she was somehow in his arms, and he kissing her and kissing her hair. Her hair smelt like the tree, Hugh said, so it must have been a funny sort of tree. “Kiss the tree now,” the small voice said. “You’ve hurt it.” “Oh, I say!” said Hugh, but he did as he was told, and then they climbed down the magic tree in silence, he trying to help her and almost breaking his neck. They walked slowly back, hand in hand, towards where the house was, through the sweet lush grass. There was music somewhere, Hugh said. Or maybe there wasn’t and he only thought there was. And Hugh said that he was happier at that moment than he had ever been since in his whole life. “Mustn’t laugh at words like playmate,” said the wise kid. “You’ll get hurt if you do.” “I say, I’d like to see you again,” Hugh said shyly, and he found himself walking on the dusty lane towards Nasyngton! He was almost in Nasyngton, he could see, down the slope, the thick old bridge over the Kennet. He must have walked two miles or more while he thought he was in that garden. Playmate Place. He stopped to wipe his face, wondering passionately. He was simply streaming with perspiration. But what had happened to that old garden, that’s what puzzled him. And that kid! That jolly little kid. He rubbed his cheek, but he couldn’t be certain if there still was a damp patch where she had kissed him. Anyhow, it would have dried by then, and, anyhow again, he’d got so hot since. When he got home Hugh told Hugh’s father the outline of his adventure, and Hugh’s father told Hugh he had broken rules by being outside the gates at all and that he must have been dreaming, but Hugh said passionately that he was sorry he had broken rules but he hadn’t been anything like dreaming, and Hugh’s father told Hugh not to be an ass, and two years later Hugh’s father died. Hugh did not see the garden of the white house again. Playmate Place. Hugh, as he grew up, blushed to think of Playmate Place. He had blushed at the time, and later on he blushed at the very thought of it. He wouldn’t have dared let any of his friends at school even dream of his ever having swallowed such a soft yarn as the Playmate Place one. But, despite himself, the face of the kid whose name was to be Lamoir stayed with him, and her silver voice, and her enormous eyes. And now and then in his dreams, Hugh said, he would seem to hear the faint echo of an “Oo!” III