t Milly had drawn mother into a corner where no one could see,
and there, with a couple of tears in her two blue eyes, she had
whispered in a great hurry, so that Mrs. Norton could scarcely hear, "I
don't want to have everything just as _I_ like, to-day, mother. Can't I
do what somebody else likes? I'd rather."

Which means that Milly was a good deal excited, and her heart very full,
and that she was thinking of how, a year before, her birthday had been
rather spoilt toward the end of it by a little bit of crossness and
self-will, that she remembered afterward with a pang for many a long
day. Since then, Milly had learnt a good deal more of that long, long
lesson, which we go on learning, big people and little people, all our
lives--the lesson of self-forgetting--of how love brings joy, and to be
selfish is to be sad; and her birthday seemed to bring back to her all
that she had been learning.

"Dear little woman," said Mrs. Norton, putting back her tangled hair
from her anxious little face, "go and be happy. That's what we all like
to-day. Besides, you'll find plenty of ways of doing what other people
like before the end of the day without my inventing any. Run along now,
and climb away. Mind you don't let Olly tumble into bogs, and mind you
bring me a bunch of ferns for the dinner-table--and there'll be two
things done at any rate."

So away ran Milly; and all the morning she and Olly and father scrambled
and climbed, and raced and chatted, on the green back of old Brownholme.
They went to say good-morning to John Backhouse's cows in the "intake,"
as he called his top field, and they just peeped over the wall at the
fierce young bull he had bought at Penrith fair a few days before, and
which looked as if, birthdays or no birthdays, he could have eaten Milly
at two mouthfuls, and swallowed Olly down afterwards without knowing it.

Then they climbed and climbed after father, till, just as Olly was
beginning to feel his legs to make sure they weren't falling off, they
were so tired and shaky--there they were standing on the great pile of
stones which marks the top of the mountain--the very tip-top of all its
green points and rocks and grassy stretches. By this time the children
knew the names of most of the mountains around, and of all the lakes.
They went through them now like a lesson with their father; and even
Olly remembered a great many, and could chatter about Helvellyn, and
Fairfield, and Langdale Pikes, as if