s_ hard work; and I was so afraid of John
coming. Mary, you won't tell tales?"

"No, Harry. But I don't think you ought to have taken it without
Mother's leave."

"I don't think you can call it stealing," said Harry. "Fields are a
kind of wild places anyhow, and the paddock belongs to Father, and it
certainly doesn't belong to John."

"No," said I, doubtfully.

"I won't get any more; it's dreadfully hard work," said Harry, but as
he shook the sack out and folded it up, he added (in rather a
satisfied tone), "I've got a good deal."

I helped him to wash himself for breakfast, and half way through he
suddenly smiled and said, "John Parkinson will be glad when he sees
_you-know-what_, Mary, whatever the other John thinks of it."

But Harry did not cut any more turfs without leave, for he told me
that he had a horrid dream that night of waking up in prison with a
warder looking at him through a hole in the door of his cell, and
finding out that he was in penal servitude for stealing top spit from
the bottom of the paddock, and Father would not take him out of
prison, and that Mother did not know about it.

However, he and Arthur made a lot of compost. They said we couldn't
possibly have a Paradise without it.

It made them very impatient. We always want the spring and summer and
autumn and winter to get along faster than they do. But this year
Arthur and Harry were very impatient with summer.

They were nearly caught one day by Father coming home just as they had
got through the gates with Michael's old sack full of road-scrapings,
instead of sand (we have not any sand growing near us, and silver
sand is rather dear), but we did get leaves together and stacked them
to rot into leaf mould.

Leaf mould is splendid stuff, but it takes a long time for the leaves
to get mouldy, and it takes a great many, too. Arthur is rather
impatient, and he used to say--"I never saw leaves stick on to
branches in such a way. I mean to get into some of these old trees and
give them a good shaking to remind them what time of year it is. If I
don't we shan't have anything like enough leaves for our compost."

CHAPTER VIII.

Mother was very much surprised by Arthur's letter, but not so much
puzzled as he expected. She knew Parkinson's _Paradisus_ quite well,
and only wrote to me to ask; "What are the boys after with the old
books? Does your Father know?"

But when I told her that he had given us leave to be in the library,
a