THE WILDERNESS.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 June 1932, Page 16 (Supplement)

THE WILDERNESS.

It was a pity that the new tenant next door looked so grumpy. Ihe children, peeping through the hedge at the jolly garden that had been their playground for so long, wondered what had made the old man take it. It wasn't the prim, well-stocked flower-garden that most grown-ups like, but just a huge lawn with a few oldfashioned flowers growing higgledypiggledy round it and an orchard at the bottom. It was an Ideal place for a crowd of boys and girls, and all the time the old artist and his wife had lived there the children had been free to come and go as they pleased.

“He’s got a jolly dog,” said Joan. . “He won’t have it long,” replied Maurice, “if he doesn’t look after it better. The beggar was in thj Squire’s woods yesterday; you should have heard what old Higgins said.” The Squire’s keeper was no lover of strange dogs; but whether he had anything to do with the fact that the poor thing got his leg broken that day in a brutal iron trap, nobody knew. But it was Maurice who found him, and took him home, and fetched the vet. And it was the old gentleman who said;. “I’m a dull old man; but if any of you young people can get.any pleasure out of this wilderness of mine, you need not wait for an invitation.”