She pursed her lips more tightly, and gazed at the pair of culprits as though she had hoped better things of them and _again_ had been disappointed. "You know quite well that this is out of bounds." It came out like an arrow, darting.

"We were looking for some one," began Tim, but in a tone that added plainly enough "it wasn't you."

"Who's hiding, you see," quoth Judy, "but expecting us--at once." The delay annoyed her.

"You are both well aware," Aunt Emily went on, ignoring their excuses as in duty bound, "that your parents would not approve. At this hour of the morning too! You ought to be fast asleep in bed. If your father knew--!"

Yet, strange to say, the children felt that they loved her suddenly; for the first time in their lives they thought her lovable. A kind of understanding sympathy woke in them; there was something pitiable about her. For, obviously, she was looking just as they were, but looking in such a silly way and in such hopelessly stupid places. All her life she had been looking like this, dressed in crackling black, wearing a p.r.i.c.kly bonnet and heavy goloshes, and carrying a useless umbrella that of course must bother her. It was disappointment that made her talk as she did. But it was natural she should feel disappointment, for it never rained when she had her umbrella, and her goloshes were always coming off.

"She's stuck in a hole," thought Tim, "and so she just says things at us. She hurts herself somewhere. She's tired."

"She has to be like that," thought Judy. "It's really all pretending.

Poor old thing!"

But Aunt Emily was not aware of what they felt. They were out of bed, and it was her duty to find fault; they were out of bounds, and she must take note of it. So she prepared to scold a little. Her bonnet waggled ominously. She gripped her umbrella. She spoke as though it was very early in the morning, almost dawn--as though the sun were rising.

There was confusion in her as to the time of day, it seemed. But the children did not notice this. They were so accustomed to being rebuked by her that the actual words made small impression. She was just "saying things"; they were often very muddled things; the att.i.tude, not the meaning, counted. And her att.i.tude, they divined, was subtly different.

"You know this is forbidden," she said. "It is damp and chilly. It's sure to rain presently. You'll get your feet wet. You should keep to the gravel paths. They're plain enough, are they not?" She looked about her, sniffing--a sniff that usually summoned disasters in a flock.

"Oh, yes," said Tim; "and they look like brown sugar, _we_ thought."

"It does not matter what you thought, Timothy. The paths are made on purpose to be walked upon and used--"

"They're beautifully made," interrupted Judy, unable to keep silent longer. "WEEDEN made them for us."

"And we've used them all," exclaimed Tim, "only we came to an end of them. We've done with them--paths!" The way he uttered the substantives made it instantly sound ridiculous.

Aunt Emily opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again without saying it. She stared at them instead. They watched her. All fear of her had left their hearts. A new expression rose struggling upon her pointed features. She fidgeted from one foot to the other.

They felt her as "Aunty," a poor old muddled thing, always looking in ridiculous places without the smallest notion she was wrong. Tim saw her suddenly "all dressed up on purpose" as for a game. Judy thought "She's bubbling inside--really."

"There's WEEDEN in there," Tim mentioned, pointing to the wood behind her.

Something uncommonly like a smile pa.s.sed into Aunt Emily's eyes, then vanished as suddenly as it came. Judy thought it was like a bubble that burst the instant it reached the sunlight on the surface of a pond.

"And how often," came the rebuke, automatically rather, "has your Mother told you _not_ to be familiar with the Gardener? Play if you want to, but do not play with your inferiors. Play with your Uncle Felix, with Colonel Stumper, or with me--"

Another bubble had risen, caught the sunshine, reflected all the colours of the prism, then burst and vanished into airy spray.

"But they're looking with us," Tim insisted eagerly. "We're all looking together for something--Uncle Felix, Come-Back Stumper, everybody. It's wonderful. It never ends."

Aunt Emily's hand, still clutching the umbrella, stole up and put her bonnet straight. It was done to gain a little time apparently. There was a certain hesitation in her. She seemed puzzled. She betrayed excitement too.

"Looking, are you?" she exclaimed, and her voice held a touch of mellowness that was new. "Looking!"

She stopped. She tried to hide the mellowness by swallowing it.

"Yes," said Tim. "There's some one hiding. It's Hide-and-Seek, you see.

We're the seekers. It's enormous."

"Will you come with us and look too?" suggested Judy simply. Then while Aunt Emily's lips framed themselves as from long habit into a negative or a reprimand, the child continued before either reached delivery: "There are heaps of signs about; anything lovely or beautiful is a sign--a sign that we're getting warm. We've each got ours. Mine's air.

What's yours, Aunty?"

Aunt Emily stared at them; her bewilderment increased apparently; she swallowed hard again. The children returned her stare, gazing innocently into her questioning eyes as if she were some strange bird at the Zoo. The new feeling of kinship with her grew stronger in their hearts. They knew quite well she was looking just as they were; _really_ she longed to play their game of Hide-and-Seek. She was very ignorant, of course, they saw, but they were ready and willing to teach her how to play, and would make it easy for her into the bargain.

"Signs!" she repeated, in a voice that was gentler than they had ever known it. There was almost a sound of youth in it. Judy suddenly realised that Aunt Emily had once been a girl. A softer look shone in the colourless eyes. The lips relaxed. In a hat she might have been even pretty. No one in a bonnet could be jolly. "Signs!" she repeated; "deep and beautiful! Whatever in the world--?"

She stopped abruptly, started by the exquisite trilling of a bird that was perched upon a branch quite close behind her. The liquid notes poured out in a stream of music, so rich, so lovely that it seemed as if no bird had ever sung before and that they were the first persons in the world who had ever heard it.

"My sign!" cried Judy, dancing round her disconcerted and bewildered relative. "One of my signs--that!"

"Mine is rabbits and rats and badgers," Tim called out with ungrammatical emphasis. "Anything that likes the earth are mine." He looked about him as if to point one out to her. "They're everywhere, all over the place," he added, seeing none at the moment. "Aunty, what's yours? Do tell us, because then we can go and look together."

"It's _much_ more fun than looking alone," declared Judy.

No answer came. But, caught by the astounding magic of the singing bird, Aunt Emily had turned, and in doing so the hand behind her back became visible for the first time since their meeting. The children saw it simultaneously. They nudged each other, but they said no word. The same moment, having failed to discover the bird, Aunt Emily turned back again. She looked caught, they thought. But, also she looked as if she had found something herself. The secret joy she tried to hide from them by swallowing it, rose to her wrinkled cheeks and shone in both her eyes, then overflowed and rippled down towards her trembling mouth. The lips were trembling. She smiled, but so softly, sweetly, that ten years dropped from her like a dissolving shadow. And the hand she had so long kept hidden behind her back stole forth slowly into view.

"How did you guess that I was looking for anything?" she inquired plaintively in an excited yet tremulous tone. "I thought no one knew it." She seemed genuinely surprised, yet unbelievably happy too. A great sigh of relief escaped her.

"We're all the same," one of them informed her; "so you are too!

Everybody's looking." And they crowded round to examine the objects in her hand--a dirty earth-stained trowel and a fern. They knew she collected ferns on the sly, but never before had they seen her bring home such a prize. Usually she found only crumpled things like old bits of wrinkled brown paper which she called "specimens." This one was marvellously beautiful. It had a dainty, slender stalk of ebony black, and its hundred tiny leaves quivered like a shower of green water-drops in the air. There was actual joy in every trembling bit of it.

"That's my sign," announced Aunt Emily with pride: "Maidenhair! It'll grow again. I've got the roots." And she said it as triumphantly as Stumper had said "snail-sh.e.l.l."

"Of course, Aunty," Judy cried, yet doubtfully. "_You_ ought to know."

She twiddled it round in her fingers till the quivering fronds emitted a tiny sound. "And you can use it as a feather too." She lowered her head to listen.

"We've each got a feather," mentioned Tim. "It's a compa.s.s. Shows the way, you know. You hear him calling--that way."

"The Tramp explained that," Judy added. "He's Leader. Come on, Aunty.

We ought to be off; the others went ages ago. We're going to the End of the World, and they've already started."

For a moment Aunt Emily looked as rigid as the post beside a five-barred gate. The old unbending att.i.tude took possession of her once again. Her eyes took on the tint of soapy water. Her elastic nose looked round the corner. She frowned. Her black dress crackled. The mention of a tramp and the End of the World woke all her savage educational instincts visibly.

"He's a singing tramp and shines like a Christmas Tree," explained Judy, "and he looks like everybody in the world. He's extror'iny." She turned to her brother. "Doesn't he, Tim?"

Tim ran up and caught his Aunt by the umbrella hand. He saw her stiffening. He meant to prevent it if he could.

"Everybody rolled into one," he agreed eagerly; "Daddy and Mother and the Clergyman and you."

"And me?" she asked tremulously.

"Rather!" the boy said vehemently; "as you are now, all rabbity and nice."

Aunt Emily slowly removed one big golosh, then waited.

"Cleaned up and young," cried Judy, "and smells delicious--like flowers and hay--"

"And soft and warm--"