By the time they started out the rain had stopped. Dy put the boy’s hat in his pocket, and, with a pang Roe heard him angrily cry out that he did not want it. There was too much fuss before they were off.

He took his father up the garden by a back way. Roe had never used this, and, to break the ice, tried to make something of its being so dark, for there was a high wall one side, thick shrubs on the other. But Christopher was definite. In a loud voice he told his father it was to hide all sight of the gardeners from the lawn, as these men went from kitchen to kitchen garden, and back again. From that moment he spoke up.

Separated by privet from the aspect of those lawns and borders familiar to him, Roe was brought to a red brick wall he knew, along which were trained pear trees, and to a door he had never seen, not the flamboyant wrought-iron gate which opened on to that cinder path between cabbages, which led to the peaches, but, when Christopher had turned a brass knob, one that let them into the glass-house given over to palms, hot, with long dark flowing leaves perennially dark green. Christopher broke away. He ran on to be first so that he could open the door out, on a brass latch. Recognising, when they had gone through, what had last year been a bed of carrots, Roe asked whether he remembered how in the summer they had all gone to get something for his rabbit, that he had pulled one up, and eaten it raw. Christopher said he did not know, then added coldly that his rabbit was sent away.

It came on to rain as they went along, but gently, in a mist. Roe never thought to make him put on his hat.

By the time they had come to three gardeners in a fig house spraying the heart-shaped leaves from a portable tank, Christopher was quite wet. He insisted on working the handle, and Roe helped. Then he wanted to do it on his own. Then he went inside. He took the nozzle, sending the chemical solution where he pleased. Roe thought the boy might get some in his eyes, but did not like to forbid him.

Then Christopher took his father off. They went to the summer house beyond. They found a dead mouse.

They took a path up out of the gardens into the park. It was steep in places. Roe slipped and fell, full length. Christopher was much amused. They both laughed. He kept on saying his father had looked so funny, too often. Roe noticed the wet had brought out a curl in the child’s hair, which he had never seen anything but straight.