f the
nursery party till later in the afternoon. The creaking wheels of two
small wheelbarrows made Jan look up from the letters she was writing at
the knee-hole table that stood in the nursery window, and she beheld
little Fay and Tony, followed by Meg knitting busily, as they came
through the yew archway on to the lawn.

Meg subsided into one of the white seats, but the children processed
solemnly round, pausing under Jan's window.

"I know lots an' lots of Clipture," her niece's voice proclaimed proudly
as she sat down heavily in her wheelbarrow on the top of some garden
produce she had collected.

"How much do you know?" Tony asked sceptically.

"Oh, lots an' lots, all about poor little Jophez in the bullushes, and
his instasting dleams."

"Twasn't Jophez," Tony corrected. "It was Mophez in the bulrushes, and
he didn't have no dreams. That was Jophez."

"How d'you know," Fay persisted, "that poor little Mophez had no dleams?
Why _shouldn't_ he have dleams same as Jophez?"

"It doesn't say so."

"It doesn't say he _didn't_ have dleams. He _had_ dleams, I tell you; I
know he had. Muts nicer dleams van Jophez."

"Let's ask Meg; she'll know."

Jan gave a sigh of relief. The children had not noticed her, and Meg had
a fertile mind.

The wheelbarrows were trundled across the lawn and paused in front of
Meg, while a lively duet demanded simultaneously:

{"_Did_ little Mophez have dleams?"
{"_Didn't_ deah littoo Mophez have dleams?"

When Meg had disentangled the questions and each child sat down in a
wheelbarrow at her feet, she remarked judicially: "Well, there's nothing
said about little Moses' dreams, certainly; but I should think it's
quite likely the poor baby did have dreams."

"What sort of dleams? Nicer van sheaves and sings, wasn't they?"

"I should think," Meg said thoughtfully, "that he dreamed he must cry
very quietly lest the Egyptians should hear him."

"Deah littoo Mophez ... and what nelse?"

Meg was tempted and fell. It was very easy for her to invent "dleams"
for "deah littoo Mophez" lying in his bulrush ark among the flags at the
river's edge. And, wholly regardless of geography, she transported him
to the Amber, where the flags were almost in bloom at that moment, such
local colour adding much to the realism of her stories.

Presently William grew restless. He ran to Anthony's Venetian gate in
the yew hedge and squealed (William never whined) to get out. Tony let
him out, and