The back garden was white and the roof looked like a hillside covered with snow. Where the dragon-headed gargoyle protruded, the house turned sharply and its inner wing extended into the deep back garden. Mr. Augustus Füger lived there with his wife and his son Otto.
Mrs. Augustus Füger, Henrietta, was for ever sitting in the window and sewing. At this very moment, her big bonnet was visible, looking like a white cat on the window sill. Fortunately, she did not look out of the window. The garden belonged entirely to the children. Theirs was the winged pump of the well, theirs the circular seat round the apple tree. Their kingdom.... In winter the garden seemed small, but in summer when the trees were covered with leaves and the lilac-bushes hid the secret places, it became enormous. Through its high wall a gate led to the world’s end; a grilled gate which grown-ups alone were privileged to open.
Sometimes Anne and Christopher would peep longingly for hours through its rails. They could see the roof of the tool-shed, the tar boiler and a motley of pieces of timber, beams, floorings, piles. What lovely slides they would have made if only one could have got at them! The old folks called this glorious, disorderly place, where rude big men in leather aprons used to work, the timber yard. The children did not approve of this name, they preferred “world’s end.” They liked it on a summer Sunday best when all was quiet and the smell of the heated timber penetrated the courtyard and even the house. Then one could believe in the secret known to Christopher. It was not a timber yard at all. The grown-ups had no business with it. It was beyond all manner of doubt the playground of giant children who had strewn it with their building bricks.
“And when I sleep, they play with them,” the boy whispered.
“One can’t believe that just now,” Anne answered seriously, “when everything is so clear.”
Crestfallen, Christopher walked behind her in the snow. They only stopped under the porch in front of a door bearing a board with the inscription “Canzelei.”[A] This word sounded like a sneeze. It tickled the children’s lips. It made them laugh.
Anne and Christopher knocked their shoulders together.
“Canzelei.... Canzelei!”
The door opened. The clerk appeared on the threshold. He was a thin little man with a starved expression, wearing a long alpaca frock-coat; when he walked, his knees knocked together. Anne knew something about him. Grandpa had said it when he was in a temper: Feuerlein was stupid! The only one among grown-ups of whom one knew such a thing beyond doubt.
The children looked at each other and their small cheeks swelled with suppressed laughter; then, like snakes, they slid through the open door into the office.