“This is another way to it,” Maida explained. “Once you’ve taken it, you’ll never take any other.”
A little path disengaged itself from the trees which fringed the lawn, began to wind away, almost hidden, among the trees. The children followed Maida in Indian file. For a few moments they could hear Granny Flynn calling to the younger children; then the voices gradually died away; bird voices took their places; the calm and the hush of the deep forest fell upon them.
“Oh isn’t it wonderful!” Rosie said in an awed tone. “It makes me feel like—It makes me feel like—Well, it’s like being in church.”
On both sides the fresh green of the trees made an intricate screen through which the sunlight poured and splashed. The birds kept up their calls; and many insects called too. A bee buzzed through a tiny interval of silence; then a crow cawed. The road turned, dipped, sank.
“Isn’t this pretty?” Maida exclaimed as they descended into a hollow with high, thick, blossoming wild-rose bushes on both sides.
Involuntarily, the Big Six stopped and looked about them. They stood in a little dimple in the earth—bushes growing thick and high on its sides.
“How hot it is down here,” Laura commented, “and how sweet it smells.”
“I call it the Bosky Dingle,” Maida explained.
“What does Bosky Dingle mean?” Dicky enquired.
“It’s a poetry phrase,” Maida told him. “It means a kind of woody hollow.”