in autumn, and which were poking
and sprouting, and coming up in all directions.

Arthur and Harry did real gardening in the Easter holidays, and they
captured Adela now and then, and made her weed. But Christopher's
delight was to go with me to the waste places and hedges, where I had
planted things as Traveller's Joy, and to get me to show them to him
where they had begun to make a spring start, and to help him to make
up rambling stories, which he called "Supposings," of what the flowers
would be like, and what this or that traveller would say when he saw
them. One of his favorite _supposings_ was--"Supposing a very poor man
was coming along the road, with his dinner in a handkerchief; and
supposing he sat down under the hedge to eat it; and supposing it was
cold beef, and he had no mustard; and supposing there was a seed on
your nasturtium plants, and he knew it wouldn't poison him; and
supposing he ate it with his beef, and it tasted nice and hot, like a
pickle, wouldn't he wonder how it got there?"

But when the primroses had been out a long time, and the cowslips were
coming into bloom, to my horror Christopher began "supposing" that we
should find hose-in-hose in some of the fields, and all my efforts to
put this idea out of his head, and to divert him from the search, were
utterly in vain.

Whether it had anything to do with his having had water on the brain I
do not know, but when once an idea got into Christopher's head there
was no dislodging it. He now talked of hose-in-hose constantly. One
day he announced that he was "discontented" once more, and should
remain so till he had "found a hose-in-hose." I enticed him to a field
where I knew it was possible to secure an occasional oxlip, but he
only looked pale, shook his head distressingly, and said, "I don't
think nothin' of Oxlips." Colored primroses would not comfort him. He
professed to disbelieve in the time-honored prescription, "Plant a
primrose upside down, and it will come up a polyanthus," and refused
to help me to make the experiment. At last the worst came. He suddenly
spoke, with smiles--"I _know_ where we'll find hose-in-hose! In Mary's
Meadow. It's the fullest field of cowslips there is. Hurrah! Supposing
we find hose-in-hose, and supposing we find green cowslips, and
supposing we find curled cowslips or galligaskins, and supposing----"

But I could not bear it. I fairly ran away from him, and shut myself
up in my room and cried. I knew it w