ful flowers will
have become common in the country, and will give it an aspect peculiar
to itself; and, perhaps, chance or the wind will cast a few of the
seeds or some of them amidst the grass which shall cover my forgotten
grave!"

This was the end of the chapter, and then there was a vignette, a very
pretty one, of a cross-marked, grass-bound grave.

Some books, generally grown-up ones, put things into your head with a
sort of rush, and now it suddenly rushed into mine--"_That's what I'll
be!_ I can think of a name hereafter--but that's what I'll do. I'll
take seeds and cuttings, and off-shoots from our garden, and set them
in waste-places, and hedges, and fields, and I'll make an Earthly
Paradise of Mary's Meadow."

CHAPTER VI.

The only difficulty about my part was to find a name for it. I might
have taken the name of the man who wrote the book--it is Alphonse
Karr,--just as Arthur was going to be called John Parkinson. But I am
a girl, so it seemed silly to take a man's name. And I wanted some
kind of title, too, like King's Apothecary and Herbarist, or Weeding
Woman, and Alphonse Karr does not seem to have had any by-name of that
sort.

I had put Adela's bonnet on my head to carry it safely, and was still
sitting thinking, when the others burst into the library.

Arthur was first, waving a sheet of paper; but when Adela saw the
bonnet, she caught hold of his arm and pushed forward.

"Oh, it's sweet! Mary, dear, you're an angel. You couldn't be better
if you were a real milliner and lived in Paris. I'm sure you
couldn't."

"Mary," said Arthur, "remove that bonnet, which by no means becomes
you, and let Adela take it into a corner and gibber over it to
herself. I want you to hear this."

"You generally do want the platform," I said, laughing. "Adela, I am
very glad you like it. To-morrow, if I can find a bit of pink
tissue-paper, I think I could gum on little pleats round the edge of
the strings as a finish."

I did not mind how gaudily I dressed the part of Weeding Woman now.

"You are good. Mary. It will make it simply perfect; and, kilts don't
you think? Not box pleats?"

Arthur groaned.

"You shall have which you like, dear. Now, Arthur, what is it?"

Arthur shook out his paper, gave it a flap with the back of his hand,
as you do with letters when you are acting, and said--"It's to Mother,
and when she gets it, she'll be a good deal astonished, I fancy."

When I had heard the letter, I