The Enchanted Castle | Page 3

rein of darning cotton after
this."
Next morning Gerald got up early and gathered a little bunch of pink
carnations from a plant which he found hidden among the marigolds.
He tied it up with black cotton and laid it on Mademoiselle's plate. She
smiled and looked quite handsome as she stuck the flowers in her belt.
"Do you think it's quite decent," Jimmy asked later "sort of bribing
people to let you do as you like with flowers and things and passing

them the salt?"
"It's not that," said Kathleen suddenly. "I know what Gerald means,
only I never think of the things in time myself. You see, if you want
grown-ups to be nice to you the least you can do is to be nice to them
and think of little things to please them. I never think of any myself.
Jerry does; that's why all the old ladies like him. It's not bribery. It's a
sort of honesty like paying for things."
"Well, anyway," said Jimmy, putting away the moral question, "we've
got a ripping day for the woods."
They had.
The wide High Street, even at the busy morning hour almost as quiet as
a dream-street, lay bathed in sunshine; the leaves shone fresh from last
night's rain, but the road was dry, and in the sunshine the very dust of it
sparkled like diamonds. The beautiful old houses, standing stout and
strong, looked as though they were basking in the sunshine and
enjoying it.
"But are there any woods?" asked Kathleen as they passed the
market-place.
"It doesn't much matter about woods," said Gerald dreamily, "we're
sure to find something. One of the chaps told me his father said when
he was a boy there used to be a little cave under the bank in a lane near
the Salisbury Road; but he said there was an enchanted castle there too,
so perhaps the cave isn't true either." "If we were to get horns," said
Kathleen, "and to blow them very hard all the way, we might find a
magic castle."
"If you've got the money to throw away on horns..." said Jimmy
contemptuously.
"Well, I have, as it happens, so there!" said Kathleen. And the horns
were bought in a tiny shop with a bulging window full of a tangle of
toys and sweets and cucumbers and sour apples.

And the quiet square at the end of the town where the church is, and the
houses of the most respectable people, echoed to the sound of horns
blown long and loud. But none of the houses turned into enchanted
castles. Away they went along the Salisbury Road, which was very hot
and dusty, so they agreed to drink one of the bottles of ginger-beer.
"We might as well carry the ginger-beer inside us as inside the bottle,"
said Jimmy, "and we can hide the bottle and call for it as we come
back.
Presently they came to a place where the road, as Gerald said, went two
ways at once.
"That looks like adventures," said Kathleen; and they took the
right-hand road, and the next time they took a turning it was a left-hand
one, "so as to be quite fair," Jimmy said, and then a right-hand one and
then a left, and so on, till they were completely lost.
"Completely," said Kathleen; "how jolly!"
And now trees arched overhead, and the banks of the road were high
and bushy. The adventurers had long since ceased to blow their horns.
It was too tiring to go on doing that, when there was no one to be
annoyed by it.
"Oh, kriky!" observed Jimmy suddenly, "let's sit down a bit and have
some of our dinner. We might call it lunch, you know," he added
persuasively.
So they sat down in the hedge and ate the ripe red gooseberries that
were to have been their dessert.
And as they sat and rested and wished that their boots did not feel so
full of feet, Gerald leaned back against the bushes, and the bushes gave
way so that he almost fell over backward. Something had yielded to the
pressure of his back, and there was the sound of something heavy that
fell.

"Oh, Jimminy!" he remarked, recovering himself suddenly; "there's
something hollow in there the stone I was leaning against simply
went!"
"I wish it was a cave," said Jimmy; "but of course it isn't."
"If we blow the horns perhaps it will be," said Kathleen, and hastily
blew her own.
Gerald reached his hand through the bushes. "I can't feel anything but
air," he said; "it's just a hole full of emptiness. The other two pulled
back the bushes. There certainly was a hole in the bank. "I'm going to
go in," observed Gerald.
"Oh, don't!" said his