they were out in the garden
having a great consultation--"appose we make a show, and all the big
people would give us pennies."

Ted considered for a minute. They were standing, Cissy and he, by the
railing which at one side of their father's pretty garden divided it
from some lovely fields, where sheep, with their dear little lambs
skipping about beside them, were feeding. Far in the distance rose the
soft blue outlines of a lofty hill, "our precious hill" Ted's mother
used to call it, and indeed it was almost worthy of the name of
mountain, and for this she valued it still more, as it seemed to her
like a reminder of the mountain home she had loved so dearly. Ted's
glance fell on it, and it carried back his thoughts to the mountain of
his babyhood and the ogre stories mixed up with it in his mind. And then
his thoughts went wandering away to his old "hymn book," still in a
place of honour in his bookshelves, and to the fairy stories at the end
of it--Cinderella and the others. He turned to Cissy with a beaming
face.

"I'll tell you what we'll do, Cis," he said; "we'll have a show of
Beauty and the Beast. What a good idea it was of yours, Cis, to have a
show."

Cissy was _greatly_ flattered. Only she didn't quite like the idea of
her dear Ted being the Beast. But when Ted reminded her that the Beast
was _really_ so good and kind, she grew satisfied.

"And how awfully pleased Percy will be when he comes to see the seat,
_won't_ he?" said Ted. And this thought reconciled him to what hitherto
had been rather a grief to him--that Percy's holidays were shorter and
fell later in the season than his.

You can imagine, children, better than I could tell what a bustle and
fuss Ted and Cissy were in all that day. They looked so important,
Ted's eyes were so bright, and Cissy's little mouth shut close in such
a dignified way, that the big people must have been _very_ stupid big
people not to suspect something out of the common. But as they were very
kind big people, and as they understood children and children's ways,
they took care not to seem as if they did notice, and Mabel and her
sister, who were also of the home party, even helped Cissy to stitch
up an old muslin window curtain in a wonderful way for Beauty's dress,
without making any indiscreet remarks. At which little Cissy greatly
rejoiced. "_Wasn't_ I clever not to let zoo find out?" she said
afterwards, with immense satisfaction.

Late that evening--late for th