'And give it them ALL?' said Jane.
'Yes. But whose is it?'
'I should go to the first house and ask the name of the owner of
the castle,' said the golden bird, and really the idea seemed a
good one.
They dusted each other as well as they could and went down the
road. A little way on they found a tiny spring, bubbling out of
the hillside and falling into a rough stone basin surrounded by
draggled hart's-tongue ferns, now hardly green at all. Here the
children washed their hands and faces and dried them on their
pocket-handkerchiefs, which always, on these occasions, seem
unnaturally small. Cyril's and Robert's handkerchiefs, indeed,
rather undid the effects of the wash. But in spite of this the
party certainly looked cleaner than before.
The first house they came to was a little white house with green
shutters and a slate roof. It stood in a prim little garden, and
down each side of the neat path were large stone vases for flowers
to grow in; but all the flowers were dead now.
Along one side of the house was a sort of wide veranda, built of
poles and trellis-work, and a vine crawled all over it. It was
wider than our English verandas, and Anthea thought it must look
lovely when the green leaves and the grapes were there; but now
there were only dry, reddish-brown stalks and stems, with a few
withered leaves caught in them.
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