Free Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright

subside.
    â€œI feel as if there’s ginger ale instead of blood in my veins,” said Rush. “And, oh, brother, am I hungry.”
    Mark looked away absentmindedly as if he felt it would be wrong to admit that he was hungry when he had nothing to contribute. Nevertheless, they had little difficulty in coaxing him to eat three of Rush’s noble sandwiches, two stuffed eggs, an orange, and numberless cookies.
    Afterward they just sat and scorched in the sun for a while. Then they swam again. It was even colder now, for the pool’s surface was in shadow. Without the sunlight it looked deeper, more somber, more dangerous.
    Mark took them home by a different route. It was just as tangled as the last, and just as interesting. He introduced them to the taste of sassafras and black birch twigs; and to the various fragrances of pennyroyal, and bee balm, and prickly ash.
    â€œMy nose feels very well exercised,” Randy said. “It’s learned a lot in the last half hour.”
    They came to a clearing.
    â€œHere,” said Mark, “this is what I wanted to show you.”
    Square blocks of stone lay cluttered on the ground, half buried in weeds, and from their midst rose a stout brick chimney with a fireplace in it, and close by, leaning toward the chimney, grew a lilac bush, almost a tree, tall, unkempt, with dead branches showing among its heart-shaped leaves.
    â€œA house,” said Randy wonderingly. “Here in this wild place, a house, or the shell of one.”
    â€œWhose was it?” Rush wanted to know.
    â€œWho can tell? It fell to pieces, or burned up, years and years ago. Maybe fifty, maybe a hundred.”
    Maybe fifty, maybe a hundred.
    There were flowers in the tangle of undergrowth and scattered stones: small patches of white and faded pink.
    â€œLook,” cried Randy. “Phlox! All gone small and puny because of weeds, but still growing!”
    â€œYes, and the lilac bush comes out in spring,” Mark told her. “You can smell it way down at the foot of the hill; and the lilies of the valley have spread all back through the woods. You can see their leaves.… And look, those are apple trees, see? Mostly dead wood, and the apples are kind of small, but they sure taste good.”
    He showed them a mourning dove’s nest in the lilac bush, and swifts’ nests, made of mud, inside the chimney. He showed them the two deep doorways, one for entrance, one for escape, belonging to the woodchuck who was the present tenant of the house. He showed them the well, and they leaned over the stone rim and looked down into it and saw the still water far below, like black ink in a bottle, and the dark reflection of their three heads, and the thick fur of green moss clinging to the stones. Rush dropped a pebble in, and they waited, without breathing, for the splash, the little, hollow, echoing, empty plop.
    â€œIt has a special sound,” Randy said. “As if it was saying that this is the first pebble anyone has dropped into it in a hundred years!”
    Mark did not tell her that he himself had dropped dozens of pebbles into that well and that they always made the same sound.
    â€œI love this place,” said Randy. “Let’s all come up here for a picnic sometime. Maybe when the apples are ripe.”
    After that they went home. Mark had to hurry because it was almost milking time, and he had other neglected chores to take care of before Oren came home.
    â€œIt’s been a perfect day,” Randy said, pressing her hand against the arrowhead in her pocket. “Can we come again next Wednesday?”
    â€œYou bet your life,” said Mark wholeheartedly, and looking very happy.
    As they coasted down the road to home Rush said, “I think he’s a swell guy, don’t you?”
    And Randy replied, “Next to you and Oliver he’s the nicest boy I ever saw. And he’s the only one I ever saw that could walk on his hands and