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standing correctly by hoops which they forbear to trundle—we have the best authority for saying that they ought not to be in the Broad Walk at all. Their place is obviously in the contiguous “Figs.”
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 . . . . Occasionally a rebel Fig climbs over the fence into the world . . . .
—which is the Broad Walk. So says Sir James Barrie, and what he does not know about Kensington Gardens is notoriously not worth knowing. For the key of the picture, then, you are to look down at the lower left-hand corner, at the three small children running. There is no stupid “training” in these three: and if you ask whither they run, the more obvious answer is,19
