LITMIR.BIZ

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put the two kids in the car and went down to Devon County. It was forty miles and the roads were narrow and winding. But it was lovely. The dogwood was in bloom and the honeysuckle sweet all along the barbed wire fences. They took their lunch and had a picnic under an oak tree in somebody’s field. Tippy wouldn’t eat. He was too absorbed in gathering violets, leaves and blades of grass. He was such a minute and perfect image of his father that Spig laughed every time he looked at him.

      “I know who his father is, all right. I’m not sure about his mother. But what I really don’t get is this Nature Boy stuff. Doesn’t he ever whoop it up like other kids? You didn’t just sit concentrating on Socrates, did you? Or some big wheel in botany?”

      “You’re being the heavy father before he’s even out of nursery school,” said Molly. “I don’t know what we’ve produced, but it’s something special. He adores things that grow. That’s why we’ve got to have a place with a yard of some kind.”

      A few miles along they saw the sign: “Devon Manor—Waterfront Lots—$250 and Up.” The ones on the water were “Up” $500.

      “They’re beautiful, Spig.”

      “We’re planning a club house, with dances Saturday nights, oyster roasts and crab feasts,” the man said.

      “Well, let’s not rush it,” Spig said. “Let’s look at one House and Garden—and have a drink with the Camerons.” He looked at the Pilgrimage guide folder they’d picked up at a service station. “Here’s one. ‘The Garden of Eden. Miss Celia Fairlie, owner. House not on view.’ That’s fine. The kids won’t break anything. Maybe they’ll have the snakes on view, up the apple tree.”

      “Do snakes live in apple trees?” Tippy asked.

      “No. Just a joke, son. About another Garden of Eden.”

      “I’d like to see the apple tree,” Tippy said. “I’ve seen snakes at the zoo.”

      They went through Devonport, a quiet little town with a courthouse square and nobody much around. The green arrows tacked to the trees led them out a narrow road through pastures and newly planted tobacco fields. The gate marked “Eden” was a couple of miles from town. They followed a lane for half a mile between oaks and beeches, the fields on either side gleaming through shimmering masses of dogwood and shining green holly. There was another gate set in a serpentine brick wall, beyond a small Greek Revival building where a woman with a cigar box came out to take their money.

      “I’m sorry—no children,” she said with a toothy smile of no regret. “Miss Fairlie wouldn’t want the flowers trampled. Now, this building is the old estate office. John Eden landed here on the Devon in 1729. That’s why it’s called Eden’s Landing. Miss Fairlie is a direct descendant; her mother was a Miss Eden. Just the gardens. The house isn’t on view. It’s supposed to be haunted.” She laughed. “Now, if you’ll just park by the gate. The children can get out, but they must stay on this side.”

      Molly looked at Spig. Spig looked at his son and felt a sharp tug at his own heart.

      “Let’s not bother, then,” he said. “We’ll go some place else.”

      “No,” said Tippy. “We’ll stay by the car. We can see it when we grow up. We can look at the trees on this side.”

      But it took all the fun out of it for Spig and Molly. It wasn’t as if the place were crowded. There was only one other customer, a tiny old lady in a white dress, with a stiff, white sailor hat and white gloves, and a parasol standing by the iris border near the gate. She and an old, coloured man in his Sunday suit guarding the house were the only people in sight.

      “We’ll do it quickly,” Molly said. “Then let’s go and buy the lots.”

      “Right,” Spig said. The lost expression on Tippy’s face had decided it. They went rapidly along the turf walk between the borders, hardly seeing them, and both looked back then as their son’s earnest treble reached them across the peonies. He was through the gate, his sister by the hand, talking to the old lady with the sailor hat.

      “Lady, do you think it would be all right if we stood here and looked at the flowers, if we didn’t touch anything?”

      “I don’t see why not,” said the lady.

      “I’d better go back,” Spig said. But Molly was suddenly pale green. He got her over to a white iron bench. “You sit down till I get them back in the car.” He was still hearing his son’s voice.

      “My name is Tipton James O’Leary, Jr. My mother calls me Tippy. My father calls me Tip. I’m four and a half. This is my sister Kitsy. She’s only two.”

      Spig was starting towards them when he heard the lady’s voice.

      “I’m Celia Fairlie. I’m sixty-one. And I’m very happy to meet you and Kitsy, Tip. I hope you will enjoy my flowers.”

      “Thank you, Celia Fairlie,” Tip said.

      Spig grinned and came back to Molly, sat down and took her hand in his. “He’ll be all right.” They could still hear his voice.

      “We don’t have a place for a garden where we live,” he was saying. “It’s very small. It was all right till my father came home, but he’s very large. That was my father and my mother we came with. We’re going to have another baby, but we don’t know whether it’s going to be a boy or a girl till it’s born. We don’t know where we’re going to put it. It’s a present for my father, because he’s been away a very long time.”

      Spig got up hastily. “Look, the rat . . . Couldn’t you tell him to tell people I was home for a week six months ago?”

      “Sit down,” Molly said. She was blushing and less green now. “I’ll be all right in a minute. Let’s go and get our lots then.”

      But even Molly was startled when they heard Tippy go on. “Have you any children, Celia Fairlie?”

      They didn’t hear Miss Celia Fairlie’s reply. The three were moving away behind the boxwood.

      “We’d better go,” Molly said. “I feel fine. It was emotional, I guess. He was so disappointed. Let’s go get our lots. You find him.”

      But Tippy refused to go. “I’d like to stay with Celia Fairlie,” he said. He slipped his hand into hers as Kitsy toddled back to her father.

      “I’m sorry, Miss Fairlie,” Spig said. “We thought the children were staying outside.”

      “I like them inside,” said Miss Fairlie. She was very small and very erect, with pale, faraway, blue eyes. Her voice was faraway, too. “If you have some other house you want to see, Tip may stay here till you come back. Tell the woman at the gate so she doesn’t charge you a second time. Very grasping.”

      Molly and Spig looked at each other, avoiding their son’s eyes.

      “I’d like very much to stay,” he said soberly, but there was a little catch in his voice. “Miss Fairlie says she’ll show me the apple tree. She says they do have snakes, but down in the water, not in the garden.”

      “He could stay a little while, then,” Molly said. “We can come back on our way to the Camerons’. We’ll take Kitsy.”

      “I’m not sure about this,” Spig said as they got in the car.

      At the little, white-pillared office the toothy lady stopped them, smiling officiously. “The little boy . . . where is——”

      “He’s staying with Miss Fairlie a while.”

      “Oh . . .” She looked very startled indeed.

      “She said he might.”

      “Oh, well . . . I mean, I’m sure it’s all right. David—the old coloured man—he was there, wasn’t he?”

      “Down by the house,” Spig said.

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