The Garden Without Walls

cing by the thousand. A man and woman were lying in bed; I was standing up in my cot, plucking at the woman with my podgy fingers. S

he same time as the body, but at a later period with the first glimmering of m

book will carry me much further. The scene is symbolic: a little child, inarticulate, early awakened in a sunlit room, vainly striving to make life an

at one summer’s day, on a holiday at Ransby, she led me through lanes far out into the country till my legs were very tired. We came to a large white house, standing in a parkland. There we hid behind a clump of trees for hours. A horseman came riding down the avenue. My mother ran out from behind the trees and tried to make him speak

f I would like to have a sister. I refused stoutly. At dawn I was wakened by hurrying feet on the staircase. Next day I was given a ne

sidered rather dashing. She had been called “The gay Miss Fannie Evrard” and her marriage with my father had begun with an elopement. Her father was

only a reporter on the local paper at the time of his escapade; the Evrards lived at Woadley Hall and were reckoned

d not re-visit Ransby until years later. Pride prevented. My mother returned as often as finances would allow, in the vain hope of a reconciliatio

at her son’s audacity. It was without parallel in her experience until I attempted to repeat his performance with an entirely indivi

n’. She was always mounted on a gray horse, with a touch of red about her. Sometimes it was a red feather in her hat and

me that my mother had gone to find her. I would sit for hour