"All right," I said. He saw the way I was looking around furtively.
"Mr. Tatterton doesn't know you are out here?"
"No, but I don't care," I said defiantly.
"You've inherited your mother's spirit, I see." He came around my chair and took hold of the handles. "You knew her well?"
"Yes. I knew her well. She was about your age when I met her, too."
"You mean you've been working for Tony all this time? Making toys?"
"Yes." He was behind me now, pushing the chair along, so I couldn't see his face, but his voice had grown even softer.
"But I thought his brother Troy was the one who designed all the toys then."
"Oh, he was. I'm just making replicas of his designs. He taught me everything I know."
"I see." I sensed he wasn't being quite truthful. "Did you work in the cottage, too? Or did you work in a factory?"
"Both."
"Where did you meet my mother?" We were getting closer and closer to the entrance to the maze, and I thought I would talk to cloak my fear.
"Here and there." He stopped pushing me. He seemed to sense the anxiety in me. "Are you sure you want to go on?"
I didn't answer immediately. The hedges were so high and thick, the pathways through the maze were dark and looked so deep. What if this man didn't really know his way and we got lost?
"You're sure you can go in and find your way out?" He laughed.
"Blindfolded. Maybe one day I'll do it just to show you I can. But if you're afraid . . ."
"No, no, I want to go on," I said, forcing myself to be brave.
"Very well, then. Here we go," he said, and pushed me forward into the great English maze. I was actually going into it! Something that had been a fantasy for much of my life was about to happen! Once again I longed for Luke to be with me. I sat back, holding my breath, and soon we were walled up in a castle of shiny green ivy.
It was pretty in the maze, the hedges growing as tall as ten feet and making precise right-angle turns. Of course, like most of the greenery about Farthy, it needed trimming and care. But it was dark and green and soothing in there, and I felt the tension of the day, the worry, the fear, the struggle ease away from me.
"What do you think so far?" he asked as soon as we had made our first turn and gone in deeper.
"It's so quiet. I can barely hear the garden birds chirping."
"Yes, the peaceful serenity is what I love about the maze."
I looked up. Even the plaintive shrieks of the sea gulls flying overhead seemed muffled, faraway. He paused as we made another turn.
"Are you seated too low to see the roof of Farthy?"
"No, I can just make it out above the hedge. It looks so far off already."
"In the maze you can pretend you're on a different world. I often do," he confessed. "Do you like to pretend, to live in fantasy from time to time?"
"Yes, very much. Luke and I often did that, and if we were both home now, we probably still would, even though we would seem too old for it."
"Luke?"
"My . . . cousin . . my aunt Fanny's son Luke Junior."
"Oh, yes . . . your aunt Fanny. I had forgotten about her."