he had trudged to the top of them
all himself.

Then came the getting down again. Father and Milly and Olly
hand-in-hand, racing over the short fine grass, startling the little
black-faced sheep, and racing down the steep bits, where Milly and Olly
generally tumbled over in some sort of a heap at the bottom. As for the
flowers they gathered, there were so many I have no time to tell you
about them--wood-flowers and bog-flowers and grass-flowers, and ferns of
all sizes to mix with them, from the great Osmunda, which grew along the
Ravensnest Beck, down to the tiny little parsley fern. It was all
delightful--the sights and the sounds, and the fresh mountain wind that
blew them about on the top so that long afterward Milly used to look
back to that walk on Brownholme when she was seven years old as one of
the merriest times she ever spent.

Dinner was very welcome after all this scrambling; and after dinner came
a quiet time in the garden, when father read aloud to mother and Aunt
Emma, and the children kept still and listened to as much as they could
understand, at least until they went to sleep, which they both did lying
on a rug at Aunt Emma's feet. Milly couldn't understand how this had
happened at all, when she found herself waking up and rubbing her eyes,
but I think it was natural enough after their long walk in the sun and
wind.

At four o'clock nurse came for them, and when they had been put into
clean frocks and pinafores, she took them up to the farm. Milly and Olly
felt that this was a very solemn occasion, and they walked up to the
farmhouse door hand-in-hand, feeling as shy as if they had never been
there before. But at the door were Becky and Tiza waiting for them, as
smart as new pins, with shining hair, and red ribbons under their little
white collars; and the children no sooner caught sight of one another
than all their shyness flew away, and they began to chatter as usual.

In the farmhouse kitchen were Bessie and Charlie, and such a comfortable
tea spread out on a long table, covered with a red and black woollen
table-cloth instead of a white one. Becky and Tiza had filled two
tumblers with meadow-sweet and blue campanula, which stood up grandly in
the middle, and there were two home-made cakes at each end, and some of
Sally's brown eggs, and piles of tempting bread and butter.

Each of the children had their gift for Milly too: Becky had plaited her
a basket of rushes, a thing she had often tried