"The fact is that my father and I took a fancy to the place. On my side this is easily to be accounted for. If all the other houses at which we had looked had proved the direct reverse of what I (on behalf of myself and my brothers and sisters) was in search of, Reka Dom in a remarkable degree answered our requirements. To explore the garden was like a tour in fairy land. It was oddly laid out. Three grass-plots or lawns, one behind another, were divided by hedges of honeysuckle and sweet-briar. The grass was long, the flower-borders were borders of desolation, where crimson paeonies and some other hardy perennials made the best of it, but the odour of the honeysuckle was luxuriously sweet in the evening air. And what a place for bowers! The second lawn had greater things in store for me. There, between two tall elm trees hung a swing. With a cry of delight I seated myself, seized the ropes, and gave a vigorous push. But the impetus was strong, and the ropes were rotten, and I and the swing came to the ground together. This did not deter me, however, from exploring the third lawn, where I made a discovery to which that of the swing was as nothing. "It was not merely that a small path through the shrubbery led me into a little enclosed piece of ground devoted to those many-shaped, box-edged little flower-beds characteristic of 'children's gardens,'--it was not alone that the beds were shaped like letters, and that there was indisputably an M among them--but they were six in number. Just one apiece for myself and my brothers and sisters! And though families of six children are not so very uncommon as to make it improbable that my father's predecessor should have had the same number of young ones as himself, the coincidence appeared to my mind almost supernatural. It really seemed as if some kind old fairy had conjured up the whole place for our benefit. And--bless the good godmother!--to crown all, there were two old tea-chests and a bottomless barrel in the yard.