The door was open, and I stood
still a moment before going through, to hold my breath and listen.
The silence was as profound as before. The place seemed deserted;
and I should have thought the house empty and shut up but for the carefully
tended radishes and the recent footmarks on the green of the path.
They were the footmarks of a child. I was stooping down to examine
a specially clear one, when the loud caw of a very bored looking crow
sitting on the wall just above my head made me jump as I have seldom in my
life jumped, and reminded me that I was trespassing. Clearly my nerves
were all to pieces, for I gathered up my skirts and fled through
the door as though a whole army of ghosts and cousins were at my heels,
nor did I stop till I had reached the remote corner where my garden was.
"Are you enjoying yourself, Elizabeth?" asked the mocking sprite that calls
itself my soul: but I was too much out of breath to answer.
This was really a very safe corner. It was separated
from the main garden and the house by the wall, and shut in on
the north side by an orchard, and it was to the last degree
unlikely that any one would come there on such an afternoon.
This plot of ground, turned now as I saw into a rockery,
had been the scene of my most untiring labours.
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