you the name I invented for
myself. But you'll have to wear four stockings, two up and two down."

"Then you may keep _that_ name to yourself," said Aunt Catherine.

Christopher looked relieved.

"Perhaps you'd not like to be called Old Man's Beard?"

"Certainly not!" said Aunt Catherine.

"It _is_ more of a boy's name," said Chris. "You might be the
Franticke or Foolish Cowslip, but it is Jack an Apes on Horseback too,
and that's a boy's name. You shall be a Daffodil, not a dwarf
daffodil, but a big one, because you are big. Wait a minute--I know
which you shall be. You shall be Nonsuch. It's a very big one, and it
means none like it. So you shall be Nonsuch, for there's no one like
you."

On which Christopher and Lady Catherine hugged each other afresh.

* * * * *

"Who told most to-day?" asked Father when we got home.

"Oh, Aunt Catherine. Much most," said Christopher.

CHAPTER XI.

The height of our game was in Autumn. It is such a good time for
digging up, and planting, and dividing, and making cuttings, and
gathering seeds, and sowing them too. But it went by very quickly,
and when the leaves began to fall they fell very quickly, and Arthur
never had to go up the trees and shake them.

After the first hard frost we quite gave up playing at the Earthly
Paradise; first, because there was nothing we could do, and, secondly,
because a lot of snow fell, and Arthur had a grand idea of making snow
statues all along the terrace, so that Mother could see them from the
drawing-room windows. We worked very hard, and it was very difficult
to manage legs without breaking; so we made most of them Romans in
togas, and they looked very well from a distance, and lasted a long
time, because the frost lasted.

And, by degrees, I almost forgot that terrible afternoon in Mary's
Meadow. Only when Saxon came to see us I told him that I was very glad
that no one understood his bark, so that he could not let out what had
become of the hose-in-hose.

But when the winter was past, and the snowdrops came out in the
shrubbery, and there were catkins on the nut trees, and the missel
thrush we had been feeding in the frost sat out on mild days and sang
to us, we all of us began to think of our gardens again, and to go
poking about "with our noses in the borders," as Arthur said, "as if
we were dogs snuffing after truffles." What we really were "snuffing
after" were the plants we had planted