"I don't care. I will go in, whether it's fairyland or not," Angel decided.
Nothing else seemed important except the garden and what might happen to her there when she had once got past the gates. Not Mademoiselle Rose, not her Claude, not going home to the hotel, and not even seeing mother.
Angel let the unseen hand guide her through the gates, and on the other side the mysterious beauty of the garden was more thrilling than ever, because it was all around her and under her feet and over her head. The road looked as if no wagons ever went over it, though it was wide enough for them to pass. It was golden-brown in patches, but was overgrown with a film of green, almost like lace. 6 The orange-trees were planted so that they made long, straight aisles shut in at the far end with a misty curtain of blue. Down each aisle a narrow, gold-brown path ran between the flowers; and, fascinated, the child from another land began slowly to follow one of the ways. A vague fancy stole through her mind that the silence and heavy perfume of lemon blossoms were, somehow, parts of each other. It was as if she were about to find out a wonderful secret; and, looking up through the green net to a sky of blue, shot with rose, she wandered on with a sense of waiting.
Not only did little paths run the length of those long, straight aisles, but crossed from one aisle into another, until Angel lost count, as from violets she visited roses, and from roses passed to carnations and stocks. Beyond the arbor of orange- and lemon-trees showered a golden rain of mimosas, and close by clustered a grove of palms, with tall-trunked, date-laden giants rearing their crests in the middle of the group, and in an outer ring, low-plumed dwarfs 7 whose feathered branches drooped to earth.
Angel Odell associated palms with large pots in halls and conservatories. She had not known until to-day that they could grow out of doors. Staring at the grove in wonder, she caught sight of something red which showed between the trailing fronds of a palm like a green-domed tent. And mixed in with the something red was something white that moved. Almost before she knew what she was doing, Angel had stooped down and crept beneath the drapery of rustling plumes.
The "red thing" was an old knitted shawl, spread over a wooden seat of the right height for a child; and the "white thing" was a half-Persian kitten. It was sitting on the shawl, too earnestly ironing its silver ruff with a pink tongue to feel the slightest concern in the intrusion of a stranger.
"Oh, you lovely catkin!" exclaimed Angel. Cautiously she subsided on to the end of the wooden seat, and, slipping off her gray mittens, began to smooth the fluffy back. On her thumb glittered a large diamond in a ring of her mother's she had picked up on the 8 dressing-table and forgotten to take off. Seeing that the object of her attentions did not openly object to them, and, indeed, appeared hypnotized by the flashing stone, she transferred the white ball of fur from the red shawl to her gray-corduroy lap. It was velvet corduroy, and even more delightful to sit on than knitted wool. The kitten submitted in a dignified, aloof manner to the child's caresses, and Angel sat rigidly still, hardly daring to breathe lest the haughty creature should take offense.
It was just then that a woman suddenly appeared from, it seemed, nowhere in particular. Angel's heart gave a jump. What if the woman—just a mere woman, not a fairy at all—owned the garden, and should scold the little stranger girl for coming in, sitting down, and playing with her kitten?
"Maybe if I don't move or make any noise she'll go away and won't see me," the child thought.
To her no grown-up person could be really young, but for a grown-up this woman looked youngish, about as young as mother. 9 Mother had been twenty-eight on her last birthday, and looked almost like a little girl before she was dressed in the morning, with clouds of dark hair falling around her small, white face and shading her big, blue eyes.