The Garden Without Walls

yet been tattered by the sun lifting up the flowers’ heads. I had no hope that I would see Ruthita,

had heard about my hen, and had come to rob me. I looked back at the windows of our house. All the blinds were lowered; everyone was sleeping. There was no sign of life anywhere, save the hopping of early risen blackbirds between bushes in search of early risen worms. With a quickly

stern, moral housemaid, God’s intimate friend, who told me everything that God had thought about me through the day when at night she was putting me to bed. Up to that moment it had never occurred to me that she wa

knew that it was something secret, and silly, and beautiful. I also had the feeling that it was something pleasant and wrong, just lik

oing to commence shamming. The gardener became very busy, piling his tools into the barrow. Hetty, talking in her cold

towards me, but he caught sight of me from between his legs. He just stopped like that with his face growing redder, his mouth wide-open, and stared. Hetty di

ied John; “I thought it were

and fro half-hysterically, making me promi

in’ wrong?” I asked.

foolishly at

that they had never done before. After breakfast, while Hetty was dusting, John built me a little fowl-run. In the afternoon, while he was cutting the grass, Hetty sat with me beneath t

u know something but still own nothing. That’s why you’re ordered about and told not to do all the things that you want most to do. You can only please yo

d, turning her face away and looking dreamily at John, who was pushing the

have to be done

Then she became solemn and answered, “I ’ave to do it before breakf

t known. When you came back to the people who knew you, they said you were married. So marriage was the third and last step. After that you were given a house, and money, and all the things for which you had always yearned. Y

instance, why Uncle Obad had a pony and I hadn’t; why I was sent to bed always at the same hour and my father went only when he chose; why big people could lose their tempers without being wicked, whereas God was always angry when I did it. There was only one thing that

omised to help Hetty all I could. In return she declared that, when she was

eyes, and long black hair and lashes. Her voice was soft and caressing, like the twittering of a bird in the ivy when one wakens on a summer morn

d, “you are funny! You come climbing over t

he had a big red scar on his forehead. A cloak hung loosely from his shoulders. He carried a stick in his hand on w

me to England in disgust. His son, Ruthita’s father, had stayed behind and been cut to pieces in the Siege of Paris. Ruthita’s mother was an Englishwoman. She had never recovered from the shock of her husband’s death. It was her light t

. Why, the pigeons strutting on the housetops had seen more than we had; and they were not half as old as we were! They spread their wings, soared up into the clouds, and vanished. We told one another stories of where they went; but lo

the currant bushes. Here, with backs against the hard wall and fingers digging in the cool damp earth, we would sit and wonder, talking in whispers, of all the mysteries that lay before us. Ruthita had vague memories of Paris, of soldiers mar

been in the early autumn, for the evenings were drawing in and often it was chilly

?” she q

mar

days, and then come back. We should find a house ready for us. Perhaps I should have a pony like Uncle Obad, and, instead of dolls, Ruthita would

do if you’d never

white hen, in spite of pepper, had failed to lay any eggs. Six shillings see

n was never locked: that was evidentl