“Oh, all right!” Hugh said, and he didn’t let on any further about his opinion of a house called Playmate Place. Hugh says a boy of nine would rather die than live in a house called Playmate Place. It sounded so soft. But she was only a kid, after all, and she couldn’t know anything.
“I’m going to run now,” the kid said, standing on one leg and staring at the other.
That was too much, Hugh said. She was going to run! As though she could run! “Beat you blindfolded,” he just said.
“Oo, you try!” she giggled, and she turned, and she flew. She just flew, Hugh said. All brown legs and golden hair. He hadn’t a chance. But he must have been quite a nice boy really, Hugh said, because he began laughing at himself. He beat this kid!
She stopped, miles away, just under a tree. Hugh panted on. And they must have run some distance, for the house and the blue roses were no longer visible. Hugh couldn’t remember any of the particulars of where they were now. There was a sense of flowers, he said, clean flowers, a lot of flowers. And that tree, under which Lamoir was waiting for him. Of course he didn’t know she was Lamoir then. That tree seemed to him a big tree. Hugh said that when you touched it it smelt like a sort of echo of all the good smells you had ever smelt.
But he hadn’t come quite up to her when she turned and, before you could say “knife,” shinned up that tree!
“I say!” cried Hugh.
“Can’t catch me!” panted a little voice from among the leaves.
“Can if I want to,” said Hugh, looking up. All he could see between the leaves was something white.
“Like you to want to,” piped the something white, and Hugh fell in love for the first and last time in his life.