The adventures Peter and Rose had were of a rather unusual kind. Peter was the leader always, and when he was pleased with his sister he called her Rose Maiden, which she liked, for it made her feel proud and happy. Rose was just an ordinary little girl, like any other, but Rose Maiden was someone wonderful. As Rose she adored her brother; as Rose Maiden she worshipped him. Peter was especially marvellous as leader of an adventure. She would have followed him to the stars. The stars often came into these adventures, because their father went in for astronomy as well as insects. By day he collected beetles and studied wasps and spiders, being a naturalist; but at night, when the sun was gone, he spent hours with his big telescope, staring at the stars. The children were sometimes allowed a peep down the mighty tube. They had seen the silvery moon with her seas and mountains; they had gazed at Venus and Mars, and once they had stared at mighty Saturn, tremendously distant, with his enormous rings about him. This was only a few days before the adventure Peter called the Water Performance, took place; and Saturn had seemed to them so wonderful that he was mixed up strangely with the adventure that followed. Saturn influenced the earth in some odd way, their father told them. “Besides,” he mentioned in rather a grave voice, “he is just now in conjunction with the moon, and so he is extra powerful, you see.” They didn’t see, because, of course, they had no idea what “in conjunction” meant. But it excited their imaginations none the less. Their father said something else as well that excited their imaginations even more: “It was always at this time, when Saturn was in conjunction, and at his strongest,” he informed them, “that the old Druids had their great ceremonies, you see.” Here, again, they didn’t “see,” because they knew nothing about Druids, and still less about old Druids. But Peter looked them up in a book, and told her that they were mighty priests, with long beards, who went in for magical ceremonies at which they used mistletoe and lighted fires on altars inside a ring of big stones. The ring of big stones, he thought, was copied from Saturn’s rings. They also made strange sacrifices on their altars, and ate queer food afterwards. They used a wonderful knife. It was called the Sacrificial Knife. “So we’d better have an Adventure,” he then told her. “A Druid one, with Saturn and everything mixed in, you see.” “Rather,” agreed Rose with enthusiasm. “I should jolly well think so.” And that was all she said, because Peter, being a man of action and of few words, would make all the arrangements, as he always did. He disliked too much talk, but the Adventures he organised never failed. They told no one about these affairs. Father was too busy to listen, and mother, of course would not understand. Mother was always thinking about wet feet and draughts, and being warmly dressed. She didn’t quite approve of stars and telescopes, because she was afraid her husband would catch cold. Insects, too she disliked. Beetles, she declared, were nasty, grubby little beasts, wasps were dangerous, and spiders were rather cruel. Had Druids been mentioned, she would probably have called them horrible old men. The Water Performance, at any rate, whatever mother might have thought of it, was too strange and vivid ever to be forgotten. The day would come when Rose would tell it to children of her own. This, she felt, might be difficult, for, although its circumstances were clear enough, there lurked a queer sense in her that perhaps she and Peter never actually went to the pond at all, but that the whole lovely episode took place⁠—well, not in her imagination exactly, but that it was always there, and that they went back to it, much as one turns back the pages of a very wonderful book of pictures.⁠ ⁠… The old country house lay quite still in the sweet darkness, everybody asleep and motionless, stretched in soft beds on each floor: Father dreaming of stars and insects, crumpled up across the mattress, his mouth wide open probably; mother, delicate as a bit of old perfumed lace, her placid mind not even dreaming, hands folded, the big four-poster protecting her; while, far away in another wing of the building, Peter and Rose.⁠ ⁠… It took place when the moon was over the three-quarters, and in conjunction, as they knew, with mighty-ringed old Saturn, who had tilted his huge circular attendants so that their planes were visible in the telescope. Uranus and Neptune, too, were doing something or other interesting at their still vaster distances. But Saturn’s was the chief part in the Adventure, and his cooperation lent a magnificent, even a terrific, atmosphere of mysterious wonder to what happened.