He was smiling this afternoon, however, and held the gate key in his hand.
As the four visitors entered the narrow passage one at a time, they felt themselves to have entered fairyland.
Inside no stone wall was now to be seen, only a high wall of roses with a low border of evergreens beneath.
A great variety of trees were in blossom. Swinging from the branches of one tree to another high overhead were garlands of roses.
It was a garden such as Titania, the Queen of the Fairies, would have chosen for her habitation.
Forgetting Marie Antoinette, for whom the garden had been originally created in the days before the unhappy Queen could have dreamed of the fate awaiting her, Mrs. Burton could think only of Shakespeare’s beautiful play of “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” In just such trees Ariel must have swung; through just such winding, sunlit, fragrant paths old Bottome, the donkey, must have wandered, his great ears hung with flowers.
During the first quarter of an hour, Mrs. Burton, the two girls and David Hale, accompanied by the French gardener wandered about the little garden together, their only conversation repeated exclamations of delight.
Then Mrs. Burton suggested that she would like to sit down for a few moments. The two girls could continue to walk with David Hale until one or the other grew tired.
A short time after, Marguerite Arnot came back alone and took a place beside the Camp Fire guardian.
They were occupying two rustic chairs under a Louisiana cypress tree for which the gardens of the Little Trianon are famous.