nd partly
the color of hay."

"_Hay, dear!_" interpolated Arthur, exactly imitating a well-known
sigh peculiar to Bessy's aunt.

"Was her bonnet like our weeding woman's bonnet?" asked Adela, in a
disappointed tone.

"Much larger," said I, "and the color of a Marigold."

Adela looked happier. "Strings the same?" she asked.

"No. One string canary color, and the other white."

"And a basket?" asked Harry.

"Yes, a basket, of course. Well, the Queen had all sorts of flowers in
her garden. Some of them were natives of the country, and some of them
were brought to her from countries far away, by men called
Root-gatherers. There were very beautiful Daffodils in the Earthly
Paradise, but the smallest of all the Daffodils--"

"A Dwarf, like the Hunchback?" said Harry.

"The Dwarf Daffodil of all was brought to her by a man called Francis
le Vean."

"That was a _much_ nicer name than John Parkinson," said Harry.

"And he was the honestest Root-gatherer that ever brought foreign
flowers into the Earthly Paradise."

"Then I love him!" said Harry.

CHAPTER V.

One sometimes thinks it is very easy to be good, and then there comes
something which makes it very hard.

I liked being a Little Mother to the others, and almost enjoyed giving
way to them. "Others first, Little Mothers afterwards," as we used to
say--till the day I made up that story for them out of the Book of
Paradise.

The idea of it took our fancy completely, the others as well as mine,
and though the story was constantly interrupted, and never came to any
real plot or end, there were no Queens, or dwarfs, or characters of
any kind in all Bechstein's fairy tales, or even in Grimm, more
popular than the Queen of the Blue Robe and her Dwarf, and the Honest
Root-gatherer, and John Parkinson, King's Apothecary and Herbarist,
and the Weeding Woman of the Earthly Paradise.

When I said, "Wouldn't it be a good new game to have an Earthly
Paradise in our gardens, and to have a King's Apothecary and Herbarist
to gather things and make medicine of them, and an honest
Root-gatherer to divide the polyanthus plants and the bulbs when we
take them up, and divide them fairly, and a Weeding Woman to work and
make things tidy, and a Queen in a blue dress, and Saxon for the
Dwarf"--the others set up such a shout of approbation that Father sent
James to inquire if we imagined that he was going to allow his house
to be turned into a bear-garden.

And Arther s