“Oh!” Arthur Duncan exclaimed suddenly. And then, quite like a girl, again and again, “Oh! Oh! Oh!”
The car had turned so that it looked straight down into a cleared glade. At the end of the vista, a group of deer, dappled in white all over their lovely, dead-leaf brown bodies, lifted their heads, and with their great soft eyes surveyed the car. But they stared for such a tiny fraction of a second that it scarcely seemed that the thing had happened at all for—flash! There was a glimpse of white as they turned tail. They vanished as instantly, as completely, as miraculously as though they were ghosts.
“Oh Maida!” Rosie exclaimed. “Deer! How wonderful! Do they belong to your father or are they wild?”
“Those that you saw are dappled deer. Father had them brought here from England,” Maida answered. “But once in a while we do see wild deer in this country.”
“Oh I’d like to see some wild deer,” Arthur said.
Dicky didn’t speak but his eyes were luminous. As for Harold, he was still gasping with the surprise of it.
On they went. The road curved and rippled like a ribbon being constantly thrown ahead of them. Suddenly they came to a great cleared space, smoother than any plush. Botkins stopped the car. At the end towered a huge house of white marble, with terraces. On the lawn, which stretched between the children and the house, grew, widely-separated, a few stately trees; wine-glass elms, oaks; copper beeches and powdered spruces. It was very still now and, unimpeded, the setting sun was sending great golden shafts across that stretch of plushy grass. They struck a pool of water in a marble basin in the middle of that emerald velvet; and through the fountain which played about it. Here ... there ... yonder ... motionless in that liquid golden light ... were white objects....
“What are those white things?” Dicky asked curiously.
And then, one of the white objects arose, opened like a fan, spread to a wonderful size its snow-white tail; moved in stately fashion along the velvety-green lawn.
“Maida!” Dicky gasped. “Not—Yes they are—white peacocks!”