But Jim did not come, and presently he wandered on, keeping to the stream’s edge, his butterfly-net over his shoulder. He had gathered a bunch of irises for Aunt Caroline, but soon they began to droop in the hot sun and in his hot hand, and he threw them away. He began to sing. His clear fresh treble voice seemed, like the skylark’s song, a part of the morning. It rose above the prattle of the stream, wordless, in a simple tune, simple as all the other tunes of nature. And then, quite suddenly, he came to the end of his path. He had reached a fence of barbed wire, beyond which stretched a meadow, where lazy cows stood patiently switching the flies from their backs. Grif, after tearing his jacket, managed to climb the fence. He ran across the meadow and up a daisied bank, on the top of which grew a hawthorn hedge. He squeezed himself through a gap and dropped down on the other side. He was on a road now, but he had not the faintest idea where it led to, nor how far he was from home. Right in front of him was a high brick wall, with a green wooden door in it; but the door looked as if it was not meant to be opened, and the wall was uncommonly like the back wall of a garden. As he paused, undecided whether to return to the wood or not, a tortoiseshell butterfly flitted over the hedge. It hovered above him; alighted for a moment on the wall, spreading its delicate wings flat against the warm brick; then flew over and disappeared. Grif’s net was in his hand, and he became aware that he had lost an opportunity. It is true, tortoiseshell butterflies are not uncommon, but this one seemed larger than usual, and at any rate Grif’s collection, if it were ever to come into existence, ought to contain one or two. The fact was that he had an unconquerable aversion to killing things. At breakfast, and under the influence of Palmer’s conversation, a collection of butterflies had seemed a highly desirable affair. But when the time came, his hunting in the wood had been lamentably half-hearted, and the solitary captive that had fluttered helplessly in his gauze net had been released. He approached the garden door, feeling sure it would be locked. There was a tuft of grass growing below it, which must mean that it was rarely used. But the door, to his surprise, was open, or rather it opened when he pushed it, giving out, as it turned on its hinges, a single clear note, that sounded to Grif’s fancy like the sound of his name. And on the threshold, as he stood net in hand, hatless, dishevelled, one stocking sagging down over his ankle, he was confronted by a lady who walked slowly towards him, a bunch of roses in her hand. She looked, he imagined, almost as if she had expected him. Very much abashed, his first impulse was to take to his heels, and he would doubtless have done so had not the lady smiled at him and seemed in every way as kind as possible. “If you are coming in, shut the door behind you, like a good boy. William must have left it unbolted.”