Clinging tightly to his hand I trudged the short blocks in silence. As I was little, and he was very large for his years, it was with difficulty that I kept pace with him; but by taking two quick steps to his single slow one, I managed to cover the same distance in almost the same number of minutes. He was a tall, overgrown boy, very fat for his age, with a foolish, large-featured face which continued to look sheepishly amiable even when he got into a temper.
"Is it far, President?" I enquired at last between panting breaths.
"There 'tis," he answered, pointing with his free hand to a fine old mansion, with a broad and hospitable front, from which the curved iron railing bent in a bright bow to the pavement. It was the one great house on the hill, with its spreading wings, its stuccoed offices, its massive white columns at the rear, which presided solemnly over the terraced hill-side. A moment later he led me up to the high, spiked wall, and swung me from the ground to a secure perch on his shoulder. With my hands clinging to the iron nails that studded the wall, I looked over, and then caught my breath sharply at the thought that I was gazing upon an enchanted garden. Through the interlacing elm boughs the rosy light of the afterglow fell on the magnolias and laburnums, on the rose squares, and on the tall latticed arbours, where amid a glossy bower of foliage, a few pale microphylla roses bloomed out of season. Overhead the wind stirred, and one by one the small yellow leaves drifted, like wounded butterflies, down on the box hedges and the terraced walks.
"You've got to come down now—you're too heavy," said President from below, breathing hard as he held me up.
"Jest a minute—give me a minute longer an' I'll let you eat my blackberry jam at supper."
"An' you've promised on yo' life to sham sick to-morrow?"
"I'll sham sick an' I'll let you eat my jam, too, if you'll hold me a little longer."
He lifted me still higher, and clutching desperately to the iron spikes, I hung there quivering, breathless, with a thumping heart. A glimmer of white flitted between the box rows on a lower terrace, and I saw that the princess of the enchanted garden was none other than my little girl of the evening before. She was playing quietly by herself in a bower of box, building small houses of moss and stones, which she erected with infinite patience. So engrossed was she in her play that she seemed perfectly oblivious of the fading light and of the birds and squirrels that ran past her to their homes in the latticed arbours. Higher and higher rose her houses of moss and stones, while she knelt there, patient and silent, in the terrace walk with the small, yellow leaves falling around her.
"That's a square deal now," said President, dropping me suddenly to earth. "You'd better come along and trot home or you'll get a lamming."
My enchanted garden had vanished, the spiked wall rose over my head, and before me, as I turned homeward, spread all the familiar commonplaceness of Church Hill.