rain
can do in the lakes you know, so far. Father and I have been here
sometimes when it has rained two or three weeks without stopping."

"Oh dear!" said Milly, looking extremely melancholy. "I like the
mountains very much, mother; but _do_ you think we'd better come to
Ravensnest again after this year?"

"Oh you ungrateful little woman!" said Mrs. Norton, whose love for the
place was so real that Milly's speech gave her quite a pang. "Have you
forgotten all your happy sunshiny days here, just because it has rained
for two? Why, when I was a little girl, and used to come here, the rainy
days never made me love the place a bit the less. I always used to think
the fine days made up."

"But then, mother, you were a nice little girl," said Milly, throwing
her arms round her mother's neck and kissing her. "Now, I don't feel a
bit nice this morning. It makes me so cross not to be able to go out and
get flowers and wild strawberries. And you know at home it hardly ever
rains all day."

"Gardener says sometimes it rains all over the road," interrupted Olly,
"and people can't walk along, and they have to go right up on the
mountains to get past the water place. And sometimes they have to get a
boat to take people across. Do you think we shall have to go in a boat
to church on Sunday, mother?"

"Well, we're a long way off that yet, Olly. It will take a good many
days' rain to flood the roads so deep that we can't get along them, and
this is only the second rainy day. Come, I don't think we've got much
to complain of. Now suppose, instead of doing all your lessons this
morning, you were presently to write to Jacky and Francis--you write to
Jacky, Milly, and Olly to Francis. Don't you think that would be a good
thing?"

"Oh yes, yes!" cried Milly, shutting up her copybook in a great hurry.
"They'll be so much astonished, mother, for we didn't _promise_ to write
to them. I don't believe they ever get any letters."

The children had a great deal of affection and some secret pity for
these playfellows of theirs, who had a sick mother, and who did not get
half the pleasures and amusements that they did. And, as I have already
told you, they could not bear Miss Chesterton, the little boys' aunt,
who lived with them. They felt sure that Jacky and Francis must be
unhappy, only because they had to live with Miss Chesterton.

This was Milly's letter when it was done. Milly could only write very
slowly, in rather big hand, so that