“Oh, Ju!” said Jamie, “we will live here. Will it not be fun? And I shall have a gun and shoot birds.”
“Whose house can it be?” asked Judith.
“I don’t know. Ju, the door is open; shall we go in?”
“No, Jamie, we have no right there.”
A little gate was in the wall, and Judith looked through. There had at one time certainly been a garden there, but it had been neglected, and allowed to be overrun with weeds. Roses, escallonica, and lavender had grown in untrimmed luxuriance. Marigolds rioted over the space like a weed. Pinks flourished, loving the sandy soil, but here and there the rude blue thistle had intruded and asserted its right to the sea-border land as its indigenous home.
Down came the rain, so lashing that Judith was constrained to seek shelter, and, in spite of her protest that she had no right to enter Othello Cottage, she passed the threshold.
No one was within but Jamie, who had not attended to her objection; led by curiosity, and excusing himself by the rain, he had opened the door and gone inside.
The house was unoccupied, and yet was not in a condition of neglect and decay. If no one lived there, yet certainly some one visited it, for it had not that mouldy atmosphere that pervades a house long shut up, nor were dust and sand deep on floor and table. There was furniture, though scanty. The hearth showed traces of having had a fire in it at no very distant period. There were benches. There were even tinder-box and candle on the mantle-shelf.
Jamie was in high excitement and delight. This was the ogre’s cottage to which Jack had climbed up the bean-stalk. He was sure to find somewhere the hen that laid golden eggs, and the harp that played of itself.
Judith seated herself on one of the benches and sorted her shells, leaving Jamie to amuse himself. As the house was uninhabited, it did not seem to her that any gross impropriety existed in allowing him to run in and out and peep round the rooms, and into the corners.