“These are the steps leading down to the landing pier where Father usually keeps our yacht,” she announced. “It’s no use going down now, for the Day Dream isn’t in commission this summer. This is the path to the house. Isn’t it pretty, and easy to walk on, it’s so nicely gravelled? See these beautiful lawns! Father had the underbrush cleared away and all tidied up. It cost a great deal of money to start the sods, I heard him say. Grass doesn’t like to grow on these rocks. But he made it!”
“I think the wild tangle that we have passed through is lovely,” said Cicely. “The underbrush in New England is always a surprise to me. We have lawns and trimmed trees in England, of course. But we don’t see anything wild like this.”
“Well, anybody can have a wild place around here,” said Anne loftily. “Father made this to be different. He copied somebody’s place in Italy, I believe.”
“Yes, here’s an Italian pergola,” said Norma. “And here’s a brick terrace. That’s Italian too.”
There was a neglected tennis-court on the lawn in front of the garage; and a sunken garden, dried up and weedy. Anne looked at the flower-beds in surprise and some mortification.
“Why, how badly the garden looks!” she exclaimed. “I thought Father always left somebody to take care of the place until we came again. But this looks as if nobody had been near it since last summer.”
“It would take more than one man to keep this big place in order,” said Cicely, who knew about such things.
“Oh, yes! Father employed three gardeners,” said Anne, “and I don’t know how many other men. I shall write him they aren’t doing their duty. He will be very angry when he knows. He can’t bear to see things out of order.” Anne remembered more than one exhibition of her father’s bad temper.
They were walking along the neat paths on top of the cliff, in front of the great house with its shuttered windows. The dead leaves of last fall lay brown on the unraked lawns. The wind had blown and torn the bushes here and there. Everything looked forlorn and unhappy. Anne grew more and more uneasy, even as she pointed out the elaborate arrangements of the place; the big garage, the water tower, the lighting plant, the ice house, the stable where her pony had been kept. Anne did not know where he was now; perhaps in Canada.
Presently they came to a low house with wire pens adjacent. “This was the chicken house,” said Anne. “We had pigeons and rabbits, too. But the hutches are all empty. Why, I wonder what has become of my white rabbit? I had a lovely one named Plon. Those dreadful servants have not taken care of him!”