"Stop a minute," he called suddenly, "I want to get my bearings."
I stared at him as he stood—delicate, eager, his pale eyes glistening with some new emotion.
"We are on the borders of a long beautiful lake," he said, "which is shaped like an hour-glass."
I didn't know what an hour-glass was, but I guessed that it was like the egg-glasses I have seen cooks use when I've been looking in kitchen windows to watch them time the boiling of eggs.
"We are at the waist of the glass," he said, "and all round us are vast hills clad with forests. Here a clearing has been made, and someone has built a beautiful long low house with ivy-clad verandas."
How nicely the boy talked and how prettily he waved his slender arm, and I kept on gazing at him in admiration.
"Also," he went on, "there is a smooth lawn about the house with flower beds and shrubbery, a driveway leading to the road along the lake and another driveway leading to a big barn painted red with a queer high round thing at the end."
That was a silo to store green food for the cattle, but I could not tell him.
"Beside the big red barn," he said, "is a little brown barn and a number of out-buildings. I don't know what they are. It is a fine place anyway, and must, I think, belong to my father's friend who invited me here—now let us go up to this wide pasture where you were leading me."