carpet.

But Halcyone sprang over them, she would not have crushed the meanest
weed.

"Queen Mab!" she said at last, as she sat down in the middle of the
sunlight, "I have found an old gentleman--and he is Cheiron, and if one
could see it in the right light, he may have a horse's body, and he is
going to teach me just what Jason learnt--and then I shall tell it to
you."

The rays shifted again to a path beyond, and Halcyone bounded up and
went on her way.

Old William was drawing the elder Miss La Sarthe in a dilapidated
basket-chair, up and down on the highest terrace. She held a minute
faded pink silk parasol over her head--it had an ivory handle which
folded up when she no longer needed the parasol as a shade. She wore
one-buttoned gloves, of slate-colored kid, and a wrist-band of black
velvet clasped with a buckle. An inverted cake-tin of weather-beaten
straw, trimmed with rusty velvet, shadowed her old, tired eyes; an
Indian shawl was crossed upon her thin bosom.

"Halcyone!" she called querulously. "Where have you been, child? You
must have missed your tea."

And Halcyone answered:

"In the orchard."