Chapter 13

The Grand Tour of the Gardens

You must see for yourselves that it will be difficult to follow
our adventures unless you are familiar with the Kensington
Gardens, as they now became known to David. They are in London,
where the King lives, and you go to them every day unless you are
looking decidedly flushed, but no one has ever been in the whole
of the Gardens, because it is so soon time to turn back. The
reason it is soon time to turn back is that you sleep from twelve
to one. If your mother was not so sure that you sleep from
twelve to one, you could most likely see the whole of them.

The Gardens are bounded on one side by a never-ending line of
omnibuses, over which Irene has such authority that if she holds
up her finger to any one of them it stops immediately. She then
crosses with you in safety to the other side. There are more
gates to the Gardens than one gate, but that is the one you go in
at, and before you go in you speak to the lady with the balloons,
who sits just outside. This is as near to being inside as she
may venture, because, if she were to let go her hold of the
railings for one moment, the balloons would lift her up, and she
would be flown away. She sits very squat, for the balloons are
always tugging at her, and the strain has given her quite a red
face. Once she was a new one, because the old one had let go, and
David was very sorry for the old one, but as she did let go, he
wished he had been there to see.

The Gardens are a tremendous big place, with millions and
hundreds of trees, and first you come to the Figs, but you scorn
to loiter there, for the Figs is the resort of superior little
persons, who are forbidden to mix with the commonalty, and is so
named, according to legend, because they dress in full fig.
These dainty ones are themselves contemptuously called Figs by
David and other heroes, and you have a key to the manners and
customs of this dandiacal section of the Gardens when I tell you
that cricket is called crickets here. Occasionally a rebel Fig
climbs over the fence into the world, and such a one was Miss
Mabel Grey, of whom I shall tell you when we come to Miss Mabel
Grey's gate. She was the only really celebrated Fig.

We are now in the Broad Walk, and it is as much bigger than the
other walks as your father is bigger than you. David wondered if
it began little, and grew and grew, till it was quite grown up,
and whether the other walks are its babies, and he drew a
picture, which diverted him very much, of the Broad Walk giving a
tiny walk an airing in a perambulator. In the Broad Walk you
meet all the people who are worth knowing, and there is usually a
grown-up with them to prevent their going on the damp grass, and
to make