"I remember these woods—every tree in them, I believe—as long as I remember myself;" and then he gave a little sigh.
"Do you really, grandpapa?" we said. "Won't you tell us a little about when you were a little boy?"
"Can you remember so long ago? Was it as much as a hundred years ago?" asked Gerald, opening his mouth very wide.
"Not quite so long—but too long ago to tell you stories about," he replied, and then he walked on without speaking.
Grandpapa had taken us an in-and-out sort of way—we hadn't exactly noticed where we were going, and we were surprised to find ourselves suddenly quite near home again. We had come up another lane, on the other side of Rosebuds, as it were; this lane was skirted by a high stone wall, a wall that looked something like the one that bordered our "tangle."
"Is inside there our garden, then?" asked Tib, for grandpapa had just said to us we were close to home.
"No," said grandpapa, but without looking in the direction she pointed, "that is not the Rosebuds' garden yet."
"Then what's behind there, please?" said Gerald, in his slow way. I didn't expect grandpapa to take the trouble of answering him, but he did.
"There is another garden behind there," he replied, "the garden of another house, that is to say. But it is a house that has been uninhabited for a great number of years—the garden must be a perfect wilderness by now—the place is going to be sold immediately, and the house pulled down most likely, or else turned into a mere farmhouse—the owner of the farm over there," and he pointed over our heads, "wants to buy it. So much the better."
There was a sort of dreaminess in the way grandpapa spoke, as if his thoughts were looking back somehow far beyond his words.