quite sure she knew enough about it already to make up her
mind, and all the way home she kept saying to herself, "If I could only
turn into a little farmer's girl! Why don't people have fairy godmothers
now like Cinderella?"

CHAPTER IV

OUT ON THE HILLS

Milly and Olly, and the four little Westmoreland children, had a very
pleasant tea together in the afternoon of the Nortons's first day at
Ravensnest. Bessie and Charlie certainly didn't talk much; but Tiza,
when once her mother had made her come, thought proper to get rid of a
great deal of her shyness, and to chatter and romp so much that they
quite fell in love with her, and could not be persuaded to go anywhere
or do anything without her. Nurse would not let Milly and Olly go to
call the cows, though she promised they should some other day; but she
took the whole party down to the stepping-stones after tea, and great
fun it was to see Becky and Tiza running over the stepping-stones, and
jumping from one stone to another like little fawns. Milly and Olly
wanted sorely to go too, but there was no persuading Nana to let them go
without their father to fish them out if they tumbled in, so they had to
content themselves with dangling their legs over the first
stepping-stone and watching the others. But perhaps you don't quite
known what stepping-stones are? They are large high stones, with flat
tops, which people put in, a little way apart from each other, right
across a river, so that by stepping from one to the other you can cross
to the opposite side. Of course they only do for little rivers, where
the water isn't very deep. And they don't always do even there.
Sometimes in the river Thora, where Milly and Olly's stepping-stones
were, when it rained very much, the water rose so high that it dashed
right over the stepping-stones and nobody could go across. Milly and
Olly saw the stepping-stones covered with water once or twice while they
were at Ravensnest; but the first evening they saw them the river was
very low, and the stones stood up high and dry out of the water. Milly
thought that stepping-stones were much nicer than bridges, and that it
was the most amusing and interesting way of getting across a river that
she knew. But then Milly was inclined to think everything wonderful and
interesting at Ravensnest--from the tall mountains that seemed to shut
them in all around like a wall, down to the tiny gleaming wild
strawberries, that were just beginnin