A month or so later—I went again, or it may have been that my car took the road of her own volition. She over-ran the fruitless Downs, threaded every turn of the maze of lanes below the hills, drew through the high-walled woods, impenetrable in their full leaf, came out at the cross roads where the butler had left me, and a little further on developed an internal trouble which forced me to turn her in on a grass way-waste that cut into a summer-silent hazel wood. So far as I could make sure by the sun and a six-inch Ordnance map, this should be the road flank of that wood which I had first explored from the heights above. I made a mighty serious business of my repairs and a glittering shop of my repair kit, spanners, pump, and the like, which I spread out orderly upon a rug. It was a trap to catch all childhood, for on such a day, I argued, the children would not be far off. When I paused in my work I listened, but the wood was so full of the noises of summer (though the birds had mated) that I could not at first distinguish these from the tread of small cautious feet stealing across the dead leaves. I rang my bell in an alluring manner, but the feet fled, and I repented, for to a child a sudden noise is very real terror. I must have been at work half an hour when I heard in the wood the voice of the blind woman crying: “Children, oh children, where are you?” and the stillness made slow to close on the perfection of that cry. She came towards me, half feeling her way between the tree boles, and though a child it seemed clung to her skirt, it swerved into the leafage like a rabbit as she drew nearer. “Is that you?” she said, “from the other side of the county?” “Yes, it’s me from the other side of the county.” “Then why didn’t you come through the upper woods? They were there just now.” “They were here a few minutes ago. I expect they knew my car had broken down, and came to see the fun.” “Nothing serious, I hope? How do cars break down?” “In fifty different ways. Only mine has chosen the fifty first.” She laughed merrily at the tiny joke, cooed with delicious laughter, and pushed her hat back. “Let me hear,” she said. “Wait a moment,” I cried, “and I’ll get you a cushion.” She set her foot on the rug all covered with spare parts, and stooped above it eagerly. “What delightful things!” The hands through which she saw glanced in the chequered sunlight. “A box here—another box! Why you’ve arranged them like playing shop!” “I confess now that I put it out to attract them. I don’t need half those things really.” “How nice of you! I heard your bell in the upper wood. You say they were here before that?” “I’m sure of it. Why are they so shy? That little fellow in blue who was with you just now ought to have got over his fright. He’s been watching me like a Red Indian.”