But they were obliged to wait more than a week because first there came some very windy days and then Gwendolen was threatened with a cold, which two things happening one after the other would no doubt have thrown her into a rage but that there was so much careful and mysterious planning to do and almost every day Destiny came in, if only for a few minutes, to talk about what was happening on the moor and in the lanes and hedges and on the borders of streams. The things she had to tell about otters' and badgers' and water-rats' houses, not to mention birds' nests and field-mice and their burrows, were enough to make you almost tremble with excitement when you heard all the intimate details from an animal charmer and realized with what thrilling eagerness and anxiety the whole busy underworld was working.
"They're same as us," said Destiny, "only they have to build their homes every year. An' it keeps 'em so busy they fair scuffle to get 'em done."
The most absorbing thing, however, was the preparations to be made before Gwendolen could be transported with sufficient secrecy to the garden. No one must see the chair-carriage and Destiny and Toby after they turned a certain corner of the shrubbery and entered upon the walk outside the ivied walls. As each day passed, Gwendolen had become more and more fixed in her feeling that the mystery surrounding the garden was one of its greatest charms. Nothing must spoil that. No one must ever suspect that they had a secret. People must think that she was simply going out with Toby and Destiny because she liked them and did not object to their looking at her. They had long and quite delightful talks about their route. They would go up this path and down that one and cross the other and go round among the fountain flower-beds as if they were looking at the "bedding-out plants" the head gardener, Mr. Roach, had been having arranged. That would seem such a rational thing to do that no one would think it at all mysterious. They would turn into the shrubbery walks and lose themselves until they came to the long walls. It was almost as serious and elaborately thought out as the plans of march made by geat generals in time of war.
Rumors of the new and curious things which were occurring in the invalid's apartments had of course filtered through the servants' hall into the stable yards and out among the gardeners, but notwithstanding this, Mr. Roach was startled one day when he received orders from Mistress Gwendolen's room to the effect that he must report himself in the apartment no outsider had ever seen, as the invalid herself desired to speak to him.
"Well, well," he said to himself as he hurriedly changed his coat, "what's to do now? Her Royal Highness that wasn't to be looked at calling up a man she's never set eyes on."
Mr. Roach was not without curiosity. He had never caught even a glimpse of the girl and had heard a dozen exaggerated stories about her uncanny looks and ways and her insane tempers. The thing he had heard oftenest was that she might die at any moment and there had been numerous fanciful descriptions of a humped back and helpless limbs, given by people who had never seen her.
"Things are changing in this house, Mr. Roach," said Mr. Medlock, as he led him up the back staircase to the corridor on to which opened the hitherto mysterious chamber.
"Let's hope they're changing for the better, Mr. Medlock," he answered.
"They couldn't well change for the worse," he continued; "and queer as it all is there's them as finds their duties made a lot easier to stand up under. Don't you be surprised, Mr. Roach, if you find yourself in the middle of a menagerie and Mark Sowerby's Destiny more at home than you or me could ever be."
There really was a sort of Magic about Destiny, as Toby always privately believed. When Mr. Roach heard her name he smiled quite leniently.
"She'd be at home in Buckingham Palace or at the bottom of a coal mine," he said. "And yet it's not impudence, either. She's just fine, is that lass."
