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Bastille.”
    She looked around, astonished at the mess the Kellaways had managed to make in the room after only a few days. It was as if a timber yard, with its chunks and planks and splinters and shavings of wood, had been dumped indoors. Scattered among the wood were saws, chisels, adzes, augers, and other tools Maggie didn’t recognize. In the corner she could see tin pots and troughs, filled with liquid. There was a smell in the air of resin and varnish. Here and there she could find order: a row of elm planks leaning against the wall, a dozen finished chair legs stacked like firewood on a shelf, wood hoop frames hanging in descending size from hooks.
    â€œDidn’t take you long to make yourself at home! Does Miss Pelham know what you’re doin’ up here?” she asked.
    â€œPa’s workshop were out in the garden back home,” Jem said, as if to explain the disorder.
    Maggie chuckled. “Looks like he thinks he’s still outside!”
    â€œWe keep the other rooms tidy enough,” replied Anne Kellaway, appearing in the doorway behind them. “Maisie, come and help me, please.” She was clearly suspicious of Maggie.
    â€œLook, here be the seat for the chair Pa’s making specially for Mr. Astley,” Maisie said, trying to put off leaving her new friend. “Extra wide to fit him. See?” She showed Maggie an oversized, saddle-shaped seat propped against other planks. “It has to dry out a bit more; then he’ll add the legs and back.”
    Maggie admired the seat, then turned to look out of the open window, with its view over Miss Pelham’s and her neighbors’ back gardens. The gardens of Hercules Buildings houses were narrow—only eighteen feet across—but they made up for this deficiency with their length. Miss Pelham’s garden was a hundred feet long. She made the most of the space by dividing it into three squares, with a central ornament gracing each: a white lilac in the square closest to the house, a stone birdbath in the central square, and a laburnum tree in the back square. Miniature hedges, graveled paths, and raised beds planted with roses created regular patterns that had little to do with nature but were more concerned with order.
    Miss Pelham had made it plain that she did not want the Kellaways hanging about in her garden other than to use the privy. Every morning, if it wasn’t raining, she liked to take a teacup full of broth—its dull, meaty smell visiting the Kellaways upstairs—and sit with it on one of two stone benches that faced each other sideways, halfway along the garden. When she got up to go inside again, she would dump the remains over a grapevine growing up the wall next to the bench. She believed the broth would make the vine grow faster and more robust than that of her neighbor’s, Mr. Blake. “He never prunes his vine, and that is a mistake, for all vines need a good pruning or the fruit will be small and sour,” Miss Pelham had confided to Jem’s mother in a momentary attempt to reconcile herself to her new lodgers. She soon discovered, however, that Anne Kellaway was not one for confidences.
    Apart from Miss Pelham’s broth times and the twice-weekly visit from a man to rake and prune, the garden was usually deserted, and Jem went into it whenever he could, even though he could see little use for one like this. It was a harsh, geometrical place, with uncomfortable benches and no lawn to lie on. There was no space in which to grow vegetables, and no fruit trees apart from the grapevine. Of all the things Jem expected from the outdoors—fertile soil, large vibrant patches of growth, a solidity that changed daily and yet suggested permanence—only the varied ranges of green he craved were available in Miss Pelham’s garden. That was why he went there—to feast his eyes on the color he loved best. He stayed as long as he could, until Miss Pelham appeared at