While she was dressing she noticed that the bell which had been tolling solemnly when she fell asleep was now silent.
When Molly was ready to go downstairs she climbed on a chair and looked out of the window into the street below, which was already alive with people moving to and fro on their early morning business. Everything looked so clean and fresh, and the sun was shining, and a breeze greeted Molly, so warm and sweetly scented that all the little doubts and fears that had crowded in on her, trying to cloud her naturally sunny outlook, were suddenly swept clean away, and Molly felt that everything was possible and good on such a perfect morning. She jumped lightly to the ground and ran across the room humming.
A patch of sunshine lay on the floor by the door, and as Molly stopped for a second to do up her shoelace she saw a curious shadow form on the patch. And the shadow was shaped like a pumpkin! Startled, she looked hastily over her shoulder: but there was nothing there. And even as she looked again at the sunlit patch, the shadow passed away.
“Why, it must have been only a cloud, passing before the sun,” she told herself, relieved. “How silly of me.”
But, nevertheless, she felt suddenly depressed; she did not hum any more and she walked slowly downstairs, instead of running with her usual quick step. In passing Jack’s room, the door of which stood wide open, she saw that the room was empty. So Jack had raced her, and was already downstairs.
“Yes, he’s been up this last half-hour, and he’s out in the back garden now,” Aunt Janet informed her. “Did you sleep well, dearie? Run out and tell your brother breakfast’ll be ready in three minutes, will you, dearie?”
And Aunt Janet bustled about between the pantry and the fireplace and the breakfast table, in the little back room. A very tempting breakfast table it looked, too; set for five, and everything so spick and span, from the crisp brown rolls to the long glass vase filled with yellow flowers standing in the centre of the white cloth.
So Molly went in search of Jack, through the open back door into the garden. The garden which was long and narrow, was full of bushes and flowers and little winding paths. At the farthest end stood six tall elm trees in a row, and it was here that Molly spied Jack and Glan’s father, standing, talking earnestly together.
“Hullo, Molly,” called Jack, when he saw her. “Come and look here.”
Molly made her way down the garden, and saw that Jack and the old man were both gazing down at something at the foot of one of the trees. It was a dark red plant-pot filled with dry soil.