then make a
bigger pile in front of us for tables, and there we sit.

Once Dr. Brown found us. We had got whooping cough, and he had come to
see if we were better; and he is very big, and he tramped so heavily
on the stairs I did really think he was a burglar; and Margery was a
little frightened too, so we were very glad to see him; and when he
saw us reading at our tables, he said, "So this is the Attic salt ye
season life with, is it?" And then he laughed just as he always does.

There is one story in my favourite Fairy Book which Margery likes too;
it is called "A Puzzling Tale." I read it to Margery when we were
sitting in our tree seat in the garden, and I put my hand over the
answer to the puzzle, and she could not guess; and if Margery could
not guess, I do not think any one else could.

This is the tale:--"Three women were once changed into flowers, and
grew in a field; but one was permitted to go home at night. Once,
when day was dawning, and she was about to return to her companions in
the field and become a flower again, she said to her husband, 'In the
morning come to the field and pick me off my stalk, then I shall be
released, and able to live at home for the future.' So the husband
went to the field as he was told, and picked his wife and took her
home.

"Now how did he know his wife's flower from the other two, for all the
three flowers were alike?"

(That is the puzzle. This is the answer:)

"_He knew his wife because there was no dew upon her flower._"

There is a very nice picture of the three flowers standing stiff and
upright, with leaves held out like hands, and large round flower
faces, all three exactly alike. I have looked at them again and again,
but I never could see any difference; for you can't see the dew on the
ones who had been out all night, and so you can't tell which was the
one who was allowed to go home. But I think it was partly being so
fond of those round flower faces in the Puzzling Tale, that made me
get so very very fond of Sunflowers.

We have splendid Sunflowers in our garden, so tall, and with such
large round faces!

The Sunflowers were in bloom when Margery went away. She bade them
good-bye, and kissed her hands to them as well as to me. She went
away in a cab, with her things in the hair trunk with brass nails on
the top. She waved her hand to me as long as ever I could see her, and
she wagged one finger particularly. I knew which finger it was, and
what she m