In time they came to the wood. An unpaved road ran through it of soft, deep sand, which deadened every sound; on either hand the trees rose, pines and larch and beech principally, with a few large-leafed shivering poplars here and there. There was no undergrowth, and few bird songs, only the dim wood aisles stretching away, quiet and green. Suddenly it seemed to Julia that the world's horizon had been stretched, the little neatness, the clean, trim brightness, the bustling, industrious toy world was gone; in its place was the twilight of the trees, the silence, the repose, the haunting, indefinable sense of home which is only to be found in these cathedrals of Nature's making. "Ah, the wood!" Denah said, with a profound sigh. "The beautiful wood! Miss Julia, do you not love it?" Julia did not assent, but Denah went on quite satisfied, "You cannot love it as I do; I think I am a child of Nature, nothing would please me more than always to live here." "You would have to go into the town sometimes," Julia said, "to buy gloves; the ones you have would not last for ever." Denah looked a little puzzled by the difficulty; she had not apparently thought out the details of life in a natural state; but before she could come to any conclusion one of the little girls cried, "Music--I hear music!" All the ladies said "Delicious!" together, and "How beautiful!" and Denah, content to ignore Nature, added rapturously, "Music in the wood! Ah, exquisite! two beauties together!" Julia echoed the remark, though the music was that of a piano-organ. The horizon had drawn in again, and the prospect narrowed; the silence was full of noises now, voices and laughter, amidst which the organ notes did not seem out of place. And near at hand under the trees there were tables spread and people having tea, enjoying themselves in a simple-hearted, noisy fashion, in no way suggestive of cathedral twilight. The carriage was put up, the tea ordered, and in a little they, too, were sitting at one of the square tables. Each lady was provided with a high wooden chair, and a little wooden box footstool. A kettle on a hot potful of smouldering wood ashes was set on the table; cups and saucers and goats' milk were also supplied to them, and opaque beet-root sugar. The food they had brought in their baskets, big new _broodje_ split in half, buttered and put together again with a slither of Dutch cheese between. These and, to wind up with, some thin sweet biscuits carried in a papier-mache box, and handed out singly by Vrouw Van Heigen, who had brought them as a surprise and a treat. "Do they have such picnics as this in England?" Anna asked, as she gathered up the crumbs of her biscuit. "I have never been to one," Julia answered, and inwardly she thought of her mother and Violet driving in a wheeled ark to the wood, there to sit at little wooden tables and stretch their mouths in the public eye.