The other shrugged her shoulders, "I do not care for scenery--no, not at
all!" she exclaimed complacently.
The carriage drew up with a jerk before a small white gate set in low,
rough, wood palings. Behind the palings lay a large, straggling, and
untidy garden, relieved from absolute ugliness by some high forest trees
which had been allowed to remain when the house in the centre of the plot
of ground was built.
Madame Wachner stepped heavily out of the carriage, and Sylvia followed
her, feeling amused and interested. She wondered very much what the
inside of the funny little villa she saw before her would be like. In any
case, the outside of the Chalet des Muguets was almost ludicrously unlike
the English houses to which she was accustomed.
Very strange, quaint, and fantastic looked the one-storey building,
standing far higher than any bungalow Sylvia had ever seen, in a lawn
of high, rank grass.
The walls of the Chalet des Muguets were painted bright pink, picked out
with sham brown beams, which in their turn were broken at intervals by
large blue china lozenges, on which were painted the giant branches of
lilies-of-the-valley which gave the villa its inappropriate name!
The chocolate-coloured row of shutters were now closed to shut out the
heat, for the sun beat down pitilessly on the little house, and the whole
place had a curiously deserted, unlived-in appearance.
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