, 'year in and
year out,' as Kezia called it. But between them we had much milder ones,
one or two quite wonderfully mild, and others middling--nothing really
to complain of. Still, a very tiny cottage house standing by itself is
pretty cold during the best of winters, even though the walls were
thick. And in wet or stormy days one does get tired of very small rooms
and few of them.

But the year that followed that bitter winter brought a pleasant little
change into my life--the first variety of the kind that had come to me.
I made real acquaintance at last with some other children.

This was how it began.

I was seven, a little past seven, at the time.

One morning I had just finished my lessons, which of course took more
than a quarter of an hour now, and was collecting my books together, to
put them away, when I heard a knock at the front door.

I was in the drawing-room--_generally_, especially in winter, I did my
lessons in the dining-room. For we never had two fires at once, and for
that reason we sat in the dining-room in the morning if it was cold,
though granny was most particular always to have a fire in the
drawing-room in the afternoon. I think now it was quite wonderful how
she managed about things like that, never to fall into irregular or
untidy ways, for as people grow old they find it difficult to be as
active and energetic as is easy for younger ones. It was all for my
sake, and every day I feel more and more grateful to her for it.

Never once in my life do I remember going into the dining-room to dinner
without first meeting grandmamma in the drawing-room, when a glance
would show her if my face and hands had been freshly washed and my hair
brushed and my dress tidy, and upstairs again would I be sent in a
twinkling if any of these matters were amiss.

But this morning I had had my lessons in the drawing-room; to begin
with, it was not winter now, but spring, and not a cold spring either;
and in the second place, Kezia had been having a baking of pastry and
cakes in the dining-room oven, and granny knew my lessons would have
fared badly if my attention had been disturbed every time the cakes had
to be seen to.

I was collecting my books, I said, to carry them into the other room,
where there was a little shelf with a curtain in front on purpose for
them, as we only kept our nicest books in the drawing-room, when this
rat-a-tat knock came to the door.

I was very surprised. It was so seldom