CHAPTER XXII
AN OLD MAN IN A GARDEN
IT is strange how a name long unspoken and unheard, once coming again within one’s ken, comes again and again before one, and in the most unlikely and unexpected ways.
For over nine years Barnabas had not chanced to hear his friend’s name mentioned, and now there was first Pippa and her wonderful likeness to him, and then the incident of the ring, both of which had served to remind him vividly and bring the name before him. But the third incident was to be a good deal stranger, in fact it was to savour somewhat of the “Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.”
They stopped for their noon halt one day in the shade of a small coppice. A little beyond it they could see the roof and chimneys of a house surrounded by a high wall. Before settling down to lunch Barnabas strolled towards it and walked round the wall. There was no means of seeing over, and the only entrance was through a small green wooden door, which was shut. Ivy grew up the wall outside, and had Barnabas felt disposed he might have climbed up by it and peered over. It was, however, too hot for such exertion. Also if there were anyone in the garden and he were seen, his position would have been, to say the least of it, undignified. He strolled back to the copse and to the lunch which the others had unpacked.
“Where ’ave you been?” asked Pippa.
Barnabas nodded in the direction of the house. “Down there,” he said.
“What’s inside?” demanded Pippa.
“Don’t know,” said Barnabas, attacking the leg of a chicken; “couldn’t see over.”
Pippa’s eyes became far off and dreamy. “Quel domage! You couldn’t climb, ze wall ver’ much too ’igh?”