grass, when Gardener came up, grumpily enough.

"To think of trusting you children with one of the table-knives and a
basket! what a fool Cook must be! I'll tell her so; and if they're lost
she'll blame me: give me the things."

He put the knife angrily in one pocket. "Perhaps it will cut a hole in
it," said one of the children, in rather a pleased tone than otherwise;
then he turned the lunch all out on the grass and crammed it in the
other pocket, hiding the basket behind a hedge.

"I'm sure I'll not be at the trouble of carrying it," said he, when the
children cried out at this; "and you shan't carry it either, for you'll
knock it about and spoil it. And as for your lunch getting warm in my
pocket, why, so much the better this cold day."

It was not a lively joke, and they knew the pocket was very dirty;
indeed, the little girls had seen him stuff a dead rat into it only the
day before. They looked ready to cry; but there was no help for them,
except going back and complaining to their mother, and they did not like
to do that. Besides, they knew that, though Gardener was cross, he was
trustworthy, and she would never let them go down to the lake without
him.

So they followed him, trying to be as good as they could--though it was
difficult work. One of them proposed pelting him with snowballs, as they
pelted each other. But at the first--which fell in his neck--he turned
round so furiously, that they never sent a second, but walked behind him
as meek as mice.

As they went, they heard little steps pattering after them.

"Perhaps it is the Brownie to play with us--I wish he would," whispered
the youngest girl to the eldest boy, whose hand she generally held; and
then the little pattering steps sounded again, traveling through the
snow, but they saw nobody--so they said nothing.

The children would have liked to go straight to the ice; but Gardener
insisted on taking them a mile round, to look at an extraordinary animal
which a farmer there had just got--sent by his brother in Australia. The
two old men stood gossiping so long that the children wearied
extremely. Every minute seemed an hour till they got on the ice.

At last one of them pulled Gardener's coat-tails, and whispered that
they were quite ready to go.

"Then I'm not," and he waited ever so much longer, and got a drink of
hot cider, which made him quite lively for a little while.

But by the time they reached the lake, he was as cross as ever. H