Sherlock decided to take the opportunity to explore a little bit around the house and yard, which he hadn't done yet. He'd been here four days and really the only part of the property he'd seen was a little bit of the woods and most of the house. He didn't even know where Mycroft's room was.
The first thing he examined was the house. He stuck his head inside every door of the house, exploring some in a little more depth but mostly just looking to see what was in each one. He found Mycroft's room, and Mycroft, who was in Mycroft's room, writing up something or other that looked extremely boring. Sherlock left him; it didn't seem very interesting to watch him just scribble away on his paper.
After thoroughly examining every room in the house, he branched out and went outside. The front yard, like he had seen when he had first arrived, was large, flat, and empty except for one rather tall magnolia tree with a tire swing hanging off of it. John and Rob and Charlie were all up in the tree, being generally extremely busy with what they were doing, which involved a lot of yelling, whatever it was. Sherlock felt a pang of jealousy as he circled round the house into the back.
The backyard was a hill going down from the house and getting fairly steep before it leveled off. It would be good for sledding in the winter, Sherlock thought, if there were sleds somewhere about. There was a little patio with a couple of chairs on it by the back door, and here he found Michael, sitting and reading in the sun. He called hello to Sherlock, and Sherlock waved a hand in reply, but he made no effort to continue the conversation, going back to whatever he was reading and leaving Sherlock to go back to his activity.
Behind the backyard were the woods Sherlock had run into the day before, which were larger than he had previously noticed. They got thicker and thicker as they moved further away from the house, which was no surprise, quickly becoming dark, dense, and impenetrable by eye. This he found interesting.
He walked back and forth along the edge a couple of times before he found a spot he thought was good to enter without being caught up too much by branches and bushes. It was the same place he'd entered before, and he could see the marks of his passage: bent and broken branches, snapped sticks on the ground, a little bit of thread where a thorn had caught his clothes. He guessed the little kids didn't much go into the woods, or maybe they weren't allowed, because he didn't see many other places where they might have come through.
He went far enough into the woods where no one could see him if he stood still, although he could make out other people. There was a stump right where he wanted to sit, and while he could tell it had been dead for a long time, it was in the perfect spot to observe without being observed.
Not that there was anything to observe, really, but it was the principle of the thing. And besides, this was a good spot to sit and read, too.
He had seen bookshelves and bookshelves of books in the living room, every kind of book, probably. He wondered if he could read those. Michael was still sitting reading on the patio; he went to ask him.
"Absolutely. Just put whatever book you choose back when you're finished with it," he told Sherlock, and Sherlock grinned, then blushed, embarrassed. Blushing only made his embarrassment worse, unfortunately, so he muttered a thank you and went inside to choose a book to read for the next hour or so.