There were large regions of the week which the school did not claim to fill. Most of the parents awaited the release of their boys and girls and bore them home in small motor cars of the wifely kind. But Mary was left, perhaps dangerously, with her freedom; simply because she wanted it to be like that. At least, she wanted it to be like that after she had met Hilary. It is less certain where she had stood previously. As for Hilary, no one greatly cared — within a wide span of hours — whether he was home or not. There was a woman named Mrs Parker who came in each day and did all that needed to be done and did it as well as could be expected (Hilary's father would not even have considered such a person "living in"); but she had no authority to exercise discipline over Hilary, and, being thoroughly modern in her ideas, no temperamental inclination either. If Hilary turned up for his tea, it would be provided. If he did not, trouble was saved.
Hilary and Mary went for long, long walks; for much of the distance, hand in hand. In the midst of the rather droopy and distorted southern-Surrey countryside (or one-time countryside), they would find small, worked-out sandpits, or, in case of rain, disused, collapsing huts, and there they would sit close together, or one at the other's feet, talking without end, and gently embracing. He would force his small fingers through her wiry mop and make jokes about electricity coming out at the ends. She would touch the back of his neck, inside his faded red shirt, with her lips, and nuzzle into the soft, fair thicket on top of his head. They learned the southern-Surrey byways and bridlepaths remarkably thoroughly, for six or eight miles to the southeast, and six or eight miles to the southwest; and, in fact, collaborated in drawing a secret map of them. That was one of the happiest things they ever did. They were always at work revising the secret map, by the use of erasers, and adding to it, and colouring it with crayons borrowed from Briarside. They never tired of walking, because no one had ever said they should.
One day they were badly frightened.
They were walking down a sandy track, which they did not exactly know, when they came upon a large property with a wall round it. The wall was high and apparently thick. It had been covered throughout its length with plaster, but much of the plaster had either flaked, or fallen completely away, revealing the yellow bricks within, themselves tending to crumble. The wall was surmounted by a hipped roofing, which projected, in order to throw clear as much as possible of any rain that might descend; and this roofing also was much battered and gapped. One might have thought the wall to be in a late stage of disease. It was blotched and mottled in every direction. None the less, it continued to be very far from surmountable, even by a fully grown person.
Hilary took a run at it, clutching at a plant which protruded from a gap in the exposed pointing, and simultaneously setting his foot upon the plaster at the bottom of a large space where the rest of the plaster had fallen away. The consequence was instant disaster. The plant leapt from its rooting, and at the same time the plaster on which Hilary's small weight rested fell off the wall in an entire large slab, and shattered into smaller pieces among the rank grass and weeds below, where Hilary lay also.
"Hilary!" It was an authentic scream, and of authentic agony.
"It's all right, Mary." Hilary resolutely raised himself, resolutely refused to weep. "I'm all right. Really I am."
She had run to him and was holding him tightly.
"Mary, please. I'll choke."
Her arms fell away from him, but uncertainly.
"We'd better go home," she said.
"No, of course not. I'm perfectly all right, I tell you. It was nothing." But this last he did not really believe.
"It was terrible," said Mary, with solemnity. She was wearing a skirt that day, a small-scale imitation of an adult woman's tweed skirt, and he could see her knees actually knocking together.
He put his arm round her shoulder, but, as he did so, became aware that he was shaking himself. "Silly," he said affectionately. "It wasn't anything much. Let's go on."
But she merely stood there, quivering beneath his extended arm.
There was a perceptible pause. Then she said: "I don't like this place."
It was most unlike her to say such a thing. He had never before known her to do so.
But always he took her seriously. "What's the matter?" he asked. "I am all right, you know. I truly am. You can feel me if you like."
And then the dog started barking — if, indeed, one could call it a bark. It was more like a steady growling roar, with a clatter mixed up in it, almost certainly of gnashing teeth: altogether something more than barking, but unmistakably canine, all the same — horribly so. Detectably it came from within the domain behind the high wall.
"Hilary," said Mary, "let's run."
But her unusual attitude had put Hilary on his mettle.
"I don't know," he said. "Not yet."
"What d'you mean?" she asked.
"I see it like this," said Hilary, rubbing a place on his knee. "Either the dog is chained up, or shut in behind that wall, and we're all right Or else he isn't, and it's no good our running."
It was somewhat the way that Mary's own influence had taught him to think, and she responded to it.
"Perhaps we should look for some big stones," she suggested.
"Yes," he said. "Though I shouldn't think it'll be necessary. I think he must be safely shut up in some way. He'd have been out by now otherwise."
"I'm going to look," said Mary.
There are plenty of stones in the worn earth of southern Surrey, and many old bricks and other constructional detritus also. Within two or three minutes, Mary had assembled a pile of such things.
In the meantime, Hilary had gone on a little along the track. He stood there, listening to the clamorous dog almost calmly.
Mary joined him, holding up the front part of her skirt, which contained four of the largest stones, more than she could carry in her hands.
"We won't need them," said Hilary, with confidence. "And if we do, they're everywhere."
Mary leaned forward and let the stones fall to the ground, taking care that they missed her toes. Possibly the quite loud thuds made the dog bark more furiously than ever.
"Perhaps he's standing guard over buried treasure?" suggested Mary.
"Or over some fairy kingdom that mortals may not enter," said Hilary.
They talked about such things for much of the time when they were together. Once they had worked together upon an actual map of Fairyland, and with Giantland adjoining.
"He might have lots of heads," said Mary.
"Come on, let's look," said Hilary.
"Quietly," said Mary, making no other demur.
He took her hand.
"There must be a gate," she remarked, after they had gone a little further, with the roaring, growling bark as obstreperous as ever.
"Let's hope it's locked then," he replied. At once he added: "Of course it's locked. He'd have been out by now otherwise."
"You said that before," said Mary. "But perhaps the answer is that there is no gate. There can't always be a gate, you know."
But there was a gate; a pair of gates, high, wrought iron, scrolled, rusted, and heavily padlocked. Through them, Hilary and Mary could see a large, palpably empty house, with many of the windows glassless, and the paint on the outside walls surviving only in streaks and smears, pink, green, and blue, as the always vaguely polluted atmosphere added its corruption to that inflicted by the weather. The house was copiously mock-battlemented and abundantly ogeed: a structure, without doubt, in the Gothic Revival taste, though of a period uncertain over at least a hundred years. Some of the heavy chimney-stacks had broken off and fallen. The front door, straight before them, was a recessed shadow. It was difficult to see whether it was open or shut. The paving stones leading to it were lost in mossy dampness.