Barnabas slithered down off the wall and came round to the green door. He felt as if he were suddenly walking into a fairy tale garden in which nothing that might happen would surprise him.
The old man came forward to meet him.
“I hope,” he said courteously, “that the child’s absence has not caused you anxiety. I found a pleasure in her conversation, and forgot that time was passing.”
“Not at all,” Barnabas assured him. “I had only just missed her. I came to look for her, and heard her voice. Forgive my unceremonious appearance.”
The old man smiled. “It was as delightful as her own,” he said.
There was a little silence. Barnabas looked towards the house. It was Elizabethan in structure, with walls stained to a variety of different colours by wind, sun, rain, and time. Roses wreathed the latticed windows, and up one side of the house a great wistaria climbed, covering part of the roof and losing itself among the chimney-stacks.
“Will you come inside?” said the old man. “There is something I would like the child to see.”
Barnabas assented. The three sleepers in the coppice were forgotten. The fascination of the place and the old man’s strange and courtly personality was upon him.
The old man had led the way into the house. They went into a square hall, dark and cool. The floor was of inlaid wood highly polished, the walls oak and hung with pictures. They passed through the hall, and the old man led the way through an arched doorway and down two steps into a room which to the mind of Barnabas belonged most assuredly to the ancient stories of the “Arabian Nights.” In shape it was circular, and hung with draperies of a curious deep blue, like the colour of the sky at night. The floor was also polished and covered with a few old Persian rugs. There was an oak table at the far side of the room, three large oak chairs, and a kind of divan covered in sapphire-blue silk and worked with tiny crescent moons and stars.
But the arresting note of the room lay in a marble statue on a pedestal. It would be hard to say wherein exactly the extraordinary fascination of it lay. But Barnabas looked at it almost spellbound. The old man motioned to them to sit down, and seated himself.