CHAPTER X.
Mrs.Bennett's cottage on the edge of Mersham Wood seemed to Robin when she first saw it to be only a part of a fairy tale.

It is true that only in certain bits of England and in pictures in books of fairy tales did one see cottages of its kind, and in them always lived with their grandmothers--in the fairy stories as Robin remembered--girls who would in good time be discovered by wandering youngest sons of fairy story kings.

The wood of great oaks and beeches spread behind and at each side of it and seemed to have no end in any land on earth.

It nestled against its primaeval looking background in a nook of its own.

Under the broad branches of the oaks and beeches tall ferns grew so thick that they formed a forest of their own--a lower, lighter, lacy forest where foxglove spires pierced here and there, and rabbits burrowed and sniffed and nibbled, and pheasants hid nests and sometimes sprang up rocketting startlingly.