my attention to his legs, which were clothed in four stockings;
one pair, as he said, being drawn tidily up over his knees, the other
pair turned down with some neatness in folds a little above his
ankles.

"Mary," he said, "I'm contented now."

"I'm very glad, Chris. But do leave off staring at your legs. All the
blood will run into your head."

"I wish things wouldn't always get into _my_ head, and nobody else's,"
said Chris, peevishly, as he raised it; but when he looked back at his
stockings, they seemed to comfort him again.

"Mary, I've found another name for myself."

"Dear Chris! I'm so glad."

"It's a real one, out of the old book. I thought of it entirely by
myself."

"Good Dwarf. What is your name?"

"_Hose-in-Hose,_" said Christopher, still smiling down upon his legs.

CHAPTER IX.

Alas for the hose-in-hose!

I laughed over Christopher and his double stockings, and I danced for
joy when Bessy's Aunt told me that she had got me a fine lot of roots
of double cowslips. I never guessed what misery I was about to suffer,
because of the hose-in-hose.

I had almost forgotten that Bessy's Aunt knew double cowslips. After I
became Traveller's Joy I was so busy with wayside planting that I had
thought less of my own garden than usual, and had allowed Arthur to do
what he liked with it as part of the Earthly Paradise (and he was
always changing his plans), but Bessy's Aunt had not forgotten about
it, which was very good of her.

The Squire's Weeding Woman is old enough to be Bessy's Aunt, but she
has an aunt of her own, who lives seven miles on the other side of the
Moor, and the Weeding Woman does not get to see her very often. It is
a very out-of-the-way village, and she has to wait for chances of a
cart and team coming and going from one of the farms, and so get a
lift.

It was the Weeding Woman's Aunt who sent me the hose-in-hose.

The Weeding Woman told me--"Aunt be mortal fond of her flowers, but
she've no notions of gardening, not in the ways of a gentleman's
garden. But she be after 'em all along, so well as the roomatiz in her
back do let her, with an old shovel and a bit of stuff to keep the
frost out, one time, and the old shovel and a bit of stuff to keep 'em
moistened from the drought, another time; cuddling of 'em like
Christians. Ee zee, Miss, Aunt be advanced in years; her family be off
her mind, zum married, zum buried; and it zim as if her flowers be
like new childern for her