“Some of them, I guess. I have a few things in my attic I’ll sell you—and some I’ll give you. I’d admire to see them in the old place once more.”
“You must let me buy them all,” Lindsay protested.
“Well, we’ll see about that,” Mrs. Spash disposed of this disagreement easily. “Have you seen the Dew Pond yet?”
“The Dew Pond!” Lindsay echoed.
“The little pond beyond the barn,” Mrs. Spash explained. Then, as though a great light dawned, “Oh, of course it’s all so growed up round it you’d never notice it. Come and I’ll show it to you.”
Lindsay followed her out of the barn. This was all like a dream, he reflected—but then everything was like a dream nowadays. He had lived in a dream for two months now. Mrs. Spash struck into a path which led beyond the barn.
The trail grew narrower and narrower; threatened after a while to disappear. Lindsay finally took the lead, broke a path. They came presently on a pond so tiny that it was not a pond at all; it was a pool. Water-lilies choked it; forget-me-nots bordered it; high wild roses screened it.
Lindsay stood looking for a long time into it. “It’s the Merry Mere of Mary Towle,” he meditated aloud. Mrs. Spash received this in the uninterrogative silence with which she had received other of his confidences. She apparently fell back easily into the ways of literary folk.
“I remember now I got a glint of water from one of the upstairs bedrooms,” Lindsay went on, “the first time I came into the house. But I forgot it instantly; and I’ve never noticed it since.”
“Wait a moment!” Mrs. Spash seemed afraid that he would leave. “There’s something else.” She attempted to push her way through the jungle in the direction of the house. For an instant her progress was easy, then bushes and vines caught her. Lindsay sprang to her assistance.