Over the low wall clambered the children, to find to their delight that the wren was in the lane before them, just a little way ahead. But now she took to flying higher and faster than she had yet done; to keep up with her at all they had to run, and even with this they sometimes lost sight of her altogether for a minute or two. But they kept up bravely—they were too eager and excited to waste breath by speaking. The race lasted for some minutes, till at last, just as Alix was about to give in, Rafe suddenly twitched her arm.
“Stop, Alix,” he panted—truth to tell, the running was harder on him than on his sister, for Rafe was of an easy-going disposition, and not given to violent exercise—“stop, Alix, she’s lighted on the old gateway.”
They both stood still and looked. Yes, there was Madam Wren on the topmost bar of a dilapidated wooden gate, standing between two solid posts at what had once been the entrance to the beautiful garden of an ancient house.
How beautiful neither the children nor any one now living knew, for even the very oldest inhabitants of that part of the country could only dimly remember having been told by their grandparents, or great-grandparents perhaps, how once upon a time Ladywood Hall had been the pride of the neighbourhood.
The wren flapped her wings, then rose upwards and flew off. This time, somehow, the children felt that it was no use trying to follow her.
“She’s gone for good,” said Rafe dolefully; but Alix’s eyes sparkled.
“You are stupid,” she said. “Don’t you see what she’s told us. We’re to look for—for something, or some one, I don’t quite know what, in the Lady’s garden.” For so somehow the grounds of the vanished house had come to be spoken of. “I think it was very dull of us not to have thought of it for ourselves, for it is a very fairy sort of place.”
“If it is that way,” said Rafe, “they must have heard us talking, and sent the wren to tell us.”
“Of course,” said Alix, “that’s just what I mean. Perhaps the wren is one herself.”