In this chap­ter titled A Rox­bury Gar­den, the sto­ry opens with laugh­ter echo­ing down sun­lit paths as sis­ters Min­na and Stel­la dash side by side, hoops rolling ahead like exten­sions of their glee. The grav­el crack­les beneath their shoes, and their sash­es rip­ple behind them like ban­ners in a breeze. Each twist and tum­ble of the hoops sparks new delight, as if the gar­den itself plays along, bloom­ing brighter under their joy. With every chant—“Go, go, gold­en ring!”—the game lifts into some­thing more than play. The hoops no longer seem like toys, but tiny gold­en cir­cles of mag­ic respond­ing to the rhythm of their voic­es. Even the bees hov­er­ing over fox­gloves pause briefly, drawn by the har­mo­ny of youth and move­ment thread­ing between flowerbeds and tree shad­ows. This space, enclosed and bloom­ing, feels entire­ly theirs—a world made real through move­ment, col­or, and unspo­ken con­nec­tion between nature and imag­i­na­tion.

Their game of hoops flows nat­u­ral­ly into anoth­er—Bat­tle­dore and Shut­tle­cock—where the rhythm soft­ens but becomes no less enchant­i­ng. The shut­tle­cock, tossed sky­ward and caught with prac­ticed grace, takes on the qual­i­ty of a liv­ing thing, drift­ing as if it breathes with the pulse of sum­mer air. Each gen­tle strike is delib­er­ate, a hymn to pre­ci­sion and play­ful­ness, the silence between taps filled with focus and laugh­ter. Their count­ing blends with the rus­tle of leaves and dis­tant hum of insects, cre­at­ing a cadence that binds the game to its set­ting. Here, too, their ges­tures are not only childlike—they are cer­e­mo­ni­al, offer­ing a glimpse into how play can be both dis­ci­plined and free. Stel­la, her eyes fixed on the white flick­er in the sun, moves with instinct, while Min­na match­es her beat, not to win but to pro­long the shared mag­ic. The gar­den, once again, folds around them like a stage, its hedges and bor­ders keep­ing time with every leap of the shut­tle­cock above their heads.

As the hour shifts, the games ease, and the girls slow their pace to the lull of mid­day. Their moth­er is occu­pied, and the space is theirs once more, though now their steps wan­der with less urgency. Curios­i­ty pulls them toward a patch of Can­ter­bury bells, where a bee dances among the petals. Their voic­es hush, their move­ments soft­en, and in a moment of care­ful delight, they trap it gen­tly under a glass jar. The bee, a blur of gold and fury, buzzes like a trapped idea—wild and vibrant, mir­ror­ing the ener­gy they’ve just spent. They study it with awe, not cru­el­ty, watch­ing as it tests the bar­ri­er. Then, as quick­ly as it was cap­tured, it is released, allowed to return to the air where it belongs. The grasshop­per they try to chase van­ish­es before they get close—an escape that feels like a qui­et joke shared between gar­den and girls.

These gen­tle moments build a por­trait of child­hood not only root­ed in games but in qui­et under­stand­ing between peo­ple and place. Their gar­den is not just a back­drop; it is an active part­ner in their expe­ri­ences, invit­ing inter­ac­tion, obser­va­tion, and won­der. Through bees and blooms, sash­es and spin­ning wheels, the world speaks in ways they still know how to hear. Their games are shaped not by rules alone but by nature’s tex­ture and timing—the weight of heat in the air, the soft­ness of petals under fin­gers, the glint of light on a hoop’s rim. This chap­ter doesn’t mere­ly describe a day; it frames a way of being—attuned, inno­cent, alive to every rus­tle of wing or crack of grav­el. In A Rox­bury Gar­den, time is not wast­ed; it is savored. Not a minute pass­es with­out its echo return­ing in the sound of play, the flight of a bee, or the arc of a shut­tle­cock across summer’s sky.