“I shan’t come just for the cakes, dear.”
“No!”
“But because of you and your Wilderness.”
“Yes, but you will like the cakes, won’t you? Sarah and me’s taken such a lot of trouble.”
“You dear fairy godmother! I want to kiss you, hard!”
They started out together about four o’clock, Eve carrying the tea-basket, and Lynette a red cushion and an old green rug. The heath garden on the hill-side above the larch wood was one great wave of purple, rose, and white, deep colours into which vision seemed to sink with a sense of utter satisfaction. The bracken had grown three or four feet high along the edge of the larch wood, so that Lynette’s glowing head disappeared into a narrow green lane. It was very still and solemn and mysterious in among the trees, with the scattered blue of the sky showing through and the sunlight stealing in here and there and making patterns upon the ground.
They were busy boiling the spirit kettle when Canterton appeared at the end of the path through the larch wood.
“Queen Mab, Queen Mab, may I come down into your grotto?”
Lynette waved to him solemnly with a hazel wand.
“Come along down, Daddy Bruin.”