“You should hear Michael sing your praises,” she said. “He has so little to say of any one that it is amazing to hear how he talks of you. He cannot make up his mind whether we have saved our season’s crop through your resourcefulness or because last week he buried a luckpenny at the head of the garden. But I know what I think!”
They went out together to inspect the whole place, to wonder at the growth of the vegetables after the rain, and to admire the plumpness of the ducks and the white Leghorn chicks, hatched while Miss Miranda was away. Betsey noticed that her friend still looked worn and anxious and that the old trick of looking quickly over her shoulder when a step went past the gate, was not gone. But of her journey she still said nothing.
“I think,” Miss Miranda remarked at last, “that it would be pleasant to walk over to the big house—or where the big house stood—and look at the flowers there. The peonies should be out by now. I was thinking of them to-day, of how cool and white they were and what banks of them should be blooming under the dining-room windows. The air feels close to-night, but there is nearly always a breeze stirring under the pine trees across the slope of the hill.”
The high gray wall that edged the lawn by the cottage was, as Elizabeth knew, the boundary of the grounds belonging to the big, ruined house. She had looked often at the gate, with its round archway, but she had never passed through it and into the crooked path beyond. The lock was rusty and difficult to turn, she noted, as though Miss Miranda did not often pass that way herself. She felt a flutter of excitement as they went through the gate, feeling that she was about to explore some of those mysteries that had been puzzling more people than herself alone.
The peonies were out indeed, great white drifts of them in a long row below a broken wall. It was not easy to realize that the heaps of blackened stones, covered with vines and lusty wild shrubs, had ever stood for a real dwelling with dining and living rooms and windows opening on the garden. Just facing them, was a stretch of wall still partly unbroken, showing a few windows and a door, charred and blackened by the cruel fire, but still firm on its hinges. A very old cherry tree with a twisted black trunk spread its branches just above. It gave Betsey a creepy feeling to look at that closed entrance and think what ruin and desolation lay behind it.
What had been the lawn was still green and smooth, bordered by a great half circle of pine trees. In the very center of the level stretch of turf was a broad round pool of clear water with a rim of cool gray stone just showing in the thick grass. There was a breeze as Miss Miranda had promised, a gentle wind that moved the heavy branches of the pines and touched the surface of the water. Elizabeth knelt in the grass to peer into the basin, to watch a few lazy fish swimming here and there and to see the mirrored green of the tree-tops all about the edge, with a circle of blue sky reflected in the center.
“You should see it a little later, after dark,” said Miss Miranda, leaning over her shoulder to look in also. “That opening between the two biggest trees gives space to reflect the sunset and show the evening star. My father taught me all the stars by showing them to me in the pool; even now I think of June as the time when the Northern Crown shines there in the middle of the basin and of August as when the Swan spreads her wings from one edge to the other.”
Perhaps Miss Miranda realized suddenly that she had said more than she intended, for never before had she dropped a hint that this great ruined place had once been her home.
“Look at old Dick,” she observed as though to forestall any questioning; “I thought that he would be coming after us.”
The solemn figure of the crow came hopping along the path, pausing to peer under stones or behind bushes for snails. With great dignity he stepped across the grass to sit on the rim of the pool.