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are you doing out here?”
    â€œI was playing,” Fancy said evasively.
    â€œPlaying? At this hour?” Aunt Fanny took Fancy’s hand and led her down the terrace steps. “Come away from the house, Fancy; we’ll go into the gardens. What were you playing?”
    Fancy smiled provokingly. “Just playing,” she said.
    â€œWho told you all of this would belong to you someday?” Aunt Fanny asked suddenly, stopping her walk to stand and look down at Fancy. “Your mother? It must have been. I suppose your mother thinks she has a claim. Let’s walk down the side path, dear; Aunt Fanny likes the secret garden early in the morning. Now, a little girl ten years old with a mother and a grandfather and an Aunt Fanny to look after her shouldn’t be always thinking about what she is going to get someday. We all love you, you know that? Aunt Fanny loves you.”
    It was almost too dark to see the path, but Aunt Fanny could see Fancy’s face turned to her, curiously. She does not have the family charm, Aunt Fanny thought, and sighed. Then Aunt Fanny stumbled, and thought, perhaps it is still too dark to go down these side paths, but now it was as far to go back as to go on. Looking upward, to see if it was getting any lighter, Aunt Fanny made small sounds of irritation. The gardeners were growing careless with these walks far from the house; perhaps they knew that only Aunt Fanny habitually came along these ways, because the hedges beside the path had not been clipped smooth, making a straight green wall on either side; indeed, when Aunt Fanny looked up she could see that the hedges had been allowed to grow almost wild; were, in fact, in some places meeting overhead, darkening the path and giving an air of gloom to a walk which should have been agreeable and refreshing. “My father,” Aunt Fanny said aloud, “would not have tolerated this; Fancy, look there: the turnings of this walk should be perfect, lending themselves to a gentle easy saunter, and here we are slapped and confused. I wish,” Aunt Fanny said, “that my father could see what has been done to the gardens.”
    â€œThere’s a gardener,” Fancy said.
    It was not until that moment, Aunt Fanny thought, that the faint depression she had been feeling deepened and centered and became conscious; walking in the gardens had always made Aunt Fanny feel happy, but when Fancy pointed out the gardener Aunt Fanny at the same time recognized that they had somehow strayed off the side path and were lost, perhaps even wandering onto someone else’s property, although, as she told herself at once, they had not gone through the wall so it was really all right; certainly they had not been gone ten minutes from the house, and the Halloran property did not end ten minutes from the house in any direction.
    â€œFancy,” she said uneasily, “I really think we had better go back,” but Fancy had run on ahead. There was light now, of a sort, but it was growing misty, and, with the green branches now reaching most frighteningly over her head and the faint touches of mist curling around the tips of leaves and through the branches and even almost hiding Fancy’s feet as she ran, Aunt Fanny became, quickly and most pressingly, nervous, and, worse, bewildered. “Fancy,” she called, “come back at once,” but Fancy, as in a dream, ran on, always too far ahead to catch, running ankle deep through the mist, turning and even laughing as she ran ahead between the hedges; “Fancy,” Aunt Fanny called, hurrying, “come back.”
    Then she too saw the gardener; he was standing on a ladder some distance down the path, and he was clipping the hedge. Aunt Fanny was perplexed, wondering how Fancy could have seen him before, so far back among the twisting curves of the path, but Fancy was running to him now, laughing, and Aunt Fanny, gasping, hurried on. Fancy caught the bottom of