ift which you've
got in your arms, drawn up as tight as any rascal of a lawyer can do
it, and that's not so tight, I believe, but what some other rascal of
a lawyer could undo it. However, they may let you alone. For I've
given it to you, my dear, and it is yours. So you can plant, and play,
and do what you please there. 'You, and your heirs and assigns, for
ever,' as the rascals say."

It was my turn now to be speechless. But as I stared blankly in front
of me, I saw that Father had come round, and was looking at me through
his eye-glass. He nodded to me, and said, "Yes, Mary, the Squire has
given Mary's Meadow to you, and it is yours."

* * * * *

Nothing would induce the Old Squire to take it back, so I had to have
it, for my very own. He said he had always been sorry he had spoken so
roughly to me, but he could not say so, as he and Father were not on
speaking terms. Just lately he was dining with Lady Catherine, to meet
her cousins from the barracks, and she was telling people after dinner
about our game (rather mean of her, I think, to let out our secrets at
a dinner-party), and when he heard about my planting things in the
hedges, he remembered what I had said. And next day he went to the
place to look, and there were the hose-in-hose.

Oh, how delighted the others were when they heard that Mary's Meadow
belonged to me.

"It's like having an Earthly Paradise given to you, straight off!"
said Harry.

"And one that doesn't want weeding," said Adela.

"And oh, Mary, Mary!" cried Arthur. "Think of the yards and yards of
top-spit. It does rejoice me to think I can go to you now when I'm making
compost, and need not be beholden to that old sell-up-your-grandfather John
for as much as would fill Adela's weeding basket, and that's about as small
an article as any one can make-believe with."

"It's very heavy when it's full," said Adela.

"Is everything hers?" asked Christopher. "Is the grass hers, and the
trees hers, and the hedges hers, and the rooks hers, and the starling
hers, and will the nightingale be hers when he comes home, and if she
could dig through to the other side of the world, would there be a
field the same size in Australia that would be hers, and are the sheep
hers, and--"

"For mercy's sake stop that catalogue, Chris," said Father. "Of course
the sheep are not hers; they were moved yesterday. By the bye, Mary, I
don't know what you propose to do with your pro