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Wearied by the long journey, I soon fell asleep, and, notwithstanding my hard couch, would probably have slept for a long while had not my aunts in their morning walk discovered me. Much alarmed, they ran and told my grandmother that a man was asleep in the summer-house.
If they fell idle, and little was done of a morning, they went unrebuked; thoroughness, and not haste, appearing to be Mistress Deborah's motto. The master of Fair View found it too noisy in his house to sit therein, and too warm to ride abroad. There were left the seat built round the cherry-tree in the garden, the long, cool box walk, and the terrace with a summer-house at either end.
The visitor was so incautious as to ask the age of his host, when, with Johnsonian emphasis, came the reply: "Sir, I tell my age to no man!" This occurred some time during the year 1880. Immediately his discomfited guest had departed, Borrow withdrew to the summer-house, where he drew up the following apothegm on "People's Age": "Never talk to people about their age.
When he came to the summer-house, he found his guest sitting there demurely with her hands folded in her lap. She had gathered some little sprigs of box and a few blossoms of periwinkle and late lilies of the valley, and they lay on the bench beside her. "So you did not go to church with Marilla?" the doctor said. "I dare say one sermon a day is enough for so small a person as you."
I looked and saw that the door to the garden was shut. Presently it was opened not to let me out, but to let the dog in yelping and bounding. I thought if he caught sight of me, I was in for a biting first, and the police after. So I jumped up, and ran for a little summer-house in the corner of the garden. The dog came after me, but I shut the door in his face.
We studied what we called Mental Philosophy, to my unmitigated delight; and Butler's Analogy, which I considered a luxury; and Shakespeare, whom I distantly but never intimately adored; Latin, to which dead language we gave seven years apiece, out of our live girlhood; Picciola and Undine we dreamed over, in the grove and the orchard; English literature is associated with the summer-house and the grape arbor, with flecks of shade and glints of light, and a sense of unmistakable privilege.
Quirk comfortable, she slipped on a thin lace shawl and went quietly into the garden. Walking about in the evening stillness, her accustomed composure returned to her. Presently she slipped into a summer-house, and sat down to think placidly. As she sat there, she heard voices, and, to her surprise, Denis Quirk and Sylvia paused directly in front of the summer-house.
A few paces beyond, a singular structure of rustic wood and glass, combining the peculiarities of a sentry-box, a summer-house, and a shelter, was built against the blank wall of the wing. He imagined the monotonous prospect from its windows of the tufted chasm, the coldly profiled northern hills beyond, and shivered.
If she had had the strength she would have struck him down with it on the floor of the summer-house. "How dare you use me in this way?" she burst out, vehemently. "Your conduct is infamous. Defend it if you can!" He made no attempt to defend it. He looked, with an expression of genuine anxiety, at the fallen pipe. It was beautifully colored it had cost him ten shillings.
Thoughtful and sad, foreseeing future discord, he remained for a short time sitting on the bench in the summer-house, his chin resting on his breast, his forehead gathered in a frown, his hands clasped. He thought himself alone. Suddenly he heard a gay voice humming the refrain of a song from a zarzuela. He looked up and saw Don Jacinto sitting in the opposite corner of the summer-house.
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