The Golden Age. Kenneth Grahame

another marble basin, in which on occasion gleams of red hinted at gold-fish poised among the spreading water-lilies. The scene lay silent and slumbrous in the brooding noon-day sun: the drowsing peacock squatted humped on the lawn, no fish leaped in the pools, no bird declared himself from the trim secluding hedges. Self-confessed it was here, then, at last, the Garden of Sleep!

      Two things, in those old days, I held in especial distrust: gamekeepers and gardeners. Seeing, however, no baleful apparitions of either quality, I pursued my way between rich flower-beds, in search of the necessary Princess. Conditions declared her presence patently as trumpets; without this centre such surroundings could not exist. A pavilion, gold-topped, wreathed with lush jessamine, beckoned with a special significance over close-set shrubs. There, if anywhere, She should be enshrined. Instinct, and some knowledge of the habits of princesses, triumphed; for (indeed) there She was! In no tranced repose, however, but laughingly, struggling to disengage her hand from the grasp of a grown-up man who occupied the marble bench with her. (As to age, I suppose now that the two swung in respective scales that pivoted on twenty. But children heed no minor distinctions. To them, the inhabited world is composed of the two main divisions: children and upgrown people; the latter in no way superior to the former – only hopelessly different. These two, then, belonged to the grown-up section.) I paused, thinking it strange they should prefer seclusion when there were fish to be caught, and butterflies to hunt in the sun outside; and as I cogitated thus, the grown-up man caught sight of me.

      'Hallo, sprat!' he said with some abruptness; 'Where do you spring from?'

      'I came up the stream,' I explained politely and comprehensively, 'and I was only looking for the Princess.'

      'Then you are a water-baby,' he replied. 'And what do you think of the Princess, now you've found her?'

      'I think she is lovely,' I said (and doubtless I was right, having never learned to flatter). 'But she's wide-awake, so I suppose somebody has kissed her!'

      This very natural deduction moved the grown-up man to laughter; but the Princess, turning red and jumping up, declared that it was time for lunch.

      'Come along, then,' said the grown-up man; 'and you too, water-baby. Come and have something solid. You must want it.'

      I accompanied them without any feeling of false delicacy. The world, as known to me, was spread with food each several mid-day, and the particular table one sat at seemed a matter of no importance. The palace was very sumptuous and beautiful, just what a palace ought to be; and we were met by a stately lady, rather more grown-up than the Princess – apparently her mother. My friend the Man was very kind, and introduced me as the Captain, saying I had just run down from Aldershot. I didn't know where Aldershot was, but I had no manner of doubt that he was perfectly right. As a rule, indeed, grown-up people are fairly correct on matters of fact; it is in the higher gift of imagination that they are so sadly to seek.

      The lunch was excellent and varied. Another gentleman in beautiful clothes – a lord presumably – lifted me into a high carved chair, and stood behind it, brooding over me like a Providence. I endeavoured to explain who I was and where I had come from, and to impress the company with my own toothbrush and Harold's tables; but either they were stupid – or is it a characteristic of Fairyland that every one laughs at the most ordinary remarks? My friend the Man said good-naturedly, 'All right, Water-baby; you came up the stream, and that's good enough for us.' The lord – a reserved sort of man, I thought – took no share in the conversation.