All the cherry-trees were in full flower; the pear-trees were coming out, and the young thickets in the garden were bending low with lilac-blossom, but Peter was miserable.
He was leaning his arms over the balustrade, and the great red peonies and loose anemones were staring up at him so that he could see down into their central folds; but what is April, and what is a half-holiday, and what indeed is life itself when one has lost perhaps the most excellent top that boy ever spun, and the loudest hummer?
And then he had taken such care of it.

Never but once, only this once, had he spun it in the gallery at all, and yet this once of all misfortunes it had rolled its last circle out so far that the balustrade had struck it, and in the leap of its rebound it had sprung over.
At first he felt as if he should like to cry.

Then a wild and daring thought came and shook at the very doors of his heart.

What if he climbed over the gate and got down, and, finding his top, brought it up so quickly that no one would ever know?
His mother and aunt were gone out for a walk; his great-grandmother and the nurse were nodding one on each side of the fire.

It was only three o'clock, and yet they had dined, and they were never known to rouse themselves up for at least half an hour at that time of day.
He took one turn along the gallery again, peeped in at the parlour window, then in a great hurry he yielded to the temptation, climbed over the wooden gate, got down the rotten old steps, and in two minutes was up to his neck in a mass of tangled blossoms.