“Yes,” Maida answered. “White peacocks. I am so glad they were there. Everything has happened just as I wanted it. Sometimes it will be days before you see deer, although there are so many here. And sometimes the peacocks wander to the back of the house. I knew you wanted to see them, Dicky, and I’ve been hoping all along that they would be here for you. There are seven. We have a dozen.”
Dicky was listening with all his ears; but at the same time he was looking with all his eyes. For out of the trees to the left, suddenly appeared another pair of peacocks in full sail. Not white ones this time; great prismatic, blue and green creatures—the sun struck bronze lights out of them as they floated on.
“It’s like a fairy tale,” Dicky breathed.
“Are we going to live there?” Rosie asked in an awed tone.
“Oh mercy no!” Maida answered. “That’s father’s house—the Big House. Our house is ever so much nicer.”
“I hope it isn’t any bigger,” Laura said, her voice a little awed too.
Maida laughed a little. “No it’s not quite as big as that,” she admitted.
“Shall I go on, Miss Maida?” Botkins asked.
“Yes, please Botkins,” Maida answered. And they continued to go on through more winding, geometrically perfect, beautifully-kept, gray roads; past armies and armies of trees: high, plumy-tipped, feathery-trunked aristocratic elms; vigorous, irregular-shaped, peasant-like oaks; clumps, gracefully-slender, fluttering a veil of green leaves, of white birch; occasional pine, resinous and shining; beeches; firs. Suddenly everybody exclaimed at once, “Oh see the pond!”