ouble of keeping it clean and dry, and of sending it back."

"Some more toast and water please," said Chris.

Aunt Catherine helped him, and continued--"Hobbs is a careful man--he
has been with me ten years--he doesn't cut flowers recklessly as a
rule, but when I saw that basket I said, 'Hobbs, you've been very
extravagant.' He looked ashamed of himself, but he said, 'I understood
they was for Miss Kitty, m'm. She's been used to nice gardens, m'm.'
Hobbs lived with them in Berkshire before he came to me."

"It was very nice of Hobbs," said Chris, emphatically.

"Humph!" said Aunt Catherine, "the flowers were mine."

"Did you ever get to the barracks?" asked Chris, "and what was they
like when you did?"

"They were about as unlike Kitty's old home as anything could well be,
She has made her rooms pretty enough, but it was easy to see she is
hard up for flowers. She's got an old rose-colored Sevres bowl that
was my Grandmother's, and there it was, filled with bramble leaves and
Traveller's Joy, (which _she_ calls Old Man's Beard; Kitty always
would differ from her elders!) and a soup-plate full of
forget-me-nots. She said two of the children had half-drowned
themselves, and lost a good straw hat in getting them for her. Just
like their mother, as I told her."

"What did she say when you brought out the basket?" asked Chris,
disposing of his reserve of currants at one mouthful, and laying down
his spoon.

"She said, 'Oh! oh! oh!' till I told her to say something more
amusing, and then she said, 'I could cry for joy!' and, 'Tell Hobbs he
remembers all my favorites.'"

Christopher here bent his head over his empty plate, and said grace
(Chris is very particular about his grace), and then got down from his
chair and went up to Lady Catherine, and threw his arms round her as
far as they would go, saying, "You are good. And I love you. I should
think she thinked you was a fairy godmother."

After they had hugged each other, Aunt Catherine said, "Will you take
me into the game, if I serve them that have no garden?"

Chris and I said "Yes" with one voice.

"Then come into the drawing-room," said Aunt Catherine, getting up and
giving a hand to each of us. "And Chris shall give me a name."

Chris pondered a long time on this subject, and seemed a good deal
disturbed in his mind. Presently he said, "I _won't_ be selfish. You
shall have it."

"Shall have what, you oddity?"

"I'm not an oddity, and I'm going to give