“I wish a fairy caretaker with a red cloak lived in our garden wall, and would tell me stories as she did to Mrs Molesworth’s children,” thought Philomène regretfully, “but then that was in the ‘Enchanted Garden,’ and I never did see a garden in all my life that looked less enchanted than ours. It is so flat, and there is no water in it, unless you count the pump, no pond or fountain, and it isn’t a bit neglected either, with the man coming twice a week to mow the grass.”
One large flower-bed, about half way down the garden, was Philomène’s very own. It was divided in two by a tiny path, on either side of which grew marigolds and London-pride, and her initials in mustard and cress. The box-bordered path ended abruptly where it ran against the wall, and it was in this wall that the unaccountable key-hole was to be seen. Philomène reasoned that where there was a key-hole there must be a key and a person to turn it, yet she had watched it by the hour, as a cat watches a mouse-hole, but without result, so that at last she gave up hope, and went back to her story-writing.
It was an afternoon early in May, tea was over, and Philomène sat in the red-cushioned rocking-chair, scribbling her latest novel. It was very quiet in the schoolroom; only the ticking of the cuckoo clock, the click of Nurse’s knitting-needles, and the scratching of Philomène’s pen were to be heard.
“There had come to the castle,” Philomène had just written, “an old man who must have seen the snowdrops herald the Spring some ninety times, with an aged woman to cook.” She was not altogether pleased with the sound of this sentence when it was finished, but after making several vain attempts to alter it, she added a foot-note: “Bad grammar, but unavoidable.”
“Miss Philomène,” said Nurse, “I wish you would go out into the garden, like a dear good child. Only look at the fine weather, and it isn’t as if you were writing anything for Miss Mills neither.” So Philomène rose reluctantly, after having first written “To be con” at the end of the page, for she had not as yet made up her mind whether the story was “to be continued” or “concluded in our next.” Then she fetched her garden hat, and went to fill her watering-can at the pump.