It won't last long--three minutes,
perhaps, by a stop-watch--but that is not my fault. My task is to
record facts as they happened.
The morning sunlight fell pleasantly on the garden of Windles, turning
it into the green and amber Paradise which Nature had intended it to
be. A number of the local birds sang melodiously in the under-growth at
the end of the lawn, while others, more energetic, hopped about the
grass in quest of worms. Bees, mercifully ignorant that, after
they had worked themselves to the bone gathering honey, the
proceeds of their labour would be collared and consumed by idle humans,
buzzed industriously to and fro and dived head foremost into flowers.
Winged insects danced sarabands in the sunshine. And in a deck-chair
under the cedar-tree Billie Bennett, with a sketching-block on her
knee, was engaged in drawing a picture of the ruined castle. Beside
her, curled up in a ball, lay her Pekinese dog, Pinky-Boodles. Beside
Pinky-Boodles slept Smith, the bulldog. In the distant stable-yard,
unseen but audible, a boy in shirt sleeves was washing the car and
singing as much as treacherous memory would permit of a popular
sentimental ballad.
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