So Sara sucked in the corners of her mouth to keep from smiling, and
tried hard to feel very cross indeed. But, as you will imagine, it was
not easy to do in that place. As you have already guessed, the place
into which Sara went when she shut the ivory doors was a sort of
garden, but not an ordinary one. To be sure, it had the pool, and the
fountain in the middle, and the moon-dial, like most gardens, and the
Gugollaph-tree where the Plynck sat, and a good many prose-bushes
besides the one with the hemmed doorknob where the Snimmy lived with
his wife. But not many gardens have such charming little openings in
the flowery hedges that shut them in, through which little paths run
out as if they were escaping through sheer mischief, and on purpose to
lead you on. And not many are placed, as this one seemed to be, in the
middle of a sort of amphitheatre, with distant mountains rising like
walls about it, golden and pansy-colored, a million miles away. The
space that lay between the hedge and the mountain-walls seemed to be
filled with sunrises and sunsets, like the Grand Canyon. I said, all
around; but, really, the walls of the amphitheatre didn't quite meet.
On one side, over the hedge, Sara could see a marble balcony, with
box-trees in vases on the balustrades; and beyond and beneath it there
was Nothing--Nothing-at-All. Sometimes, as Sara afterward learned, the
sun came to that place to set; but usually it was too lonesome, and he
set nearer the Garden.

You may well imagine that it was not easy for Sara to look cross in
such a strange, delicious place. But she knew she owed it to the poor
little Zizz, so she tried with all her might to think only of
fractions and asparagus. (Her mother had an obstinate conviction that
that, too, was good for children.)

They were all so interested in listening to the deepening blueness of