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 thought so too.

"TO THE QUEEN'S MOST EXCELLENT MAIESTIE--

"MY DEAR MOTHER,--This is to tell you that we have made you
Queen of the Blue Robe, and that your son Christopher is a
dwarf, and we think you'll both be very much pleased when
you hear it. He can do as he likes about having a hump back.
When you come home we shall give faire flowers into your
Highnesse hands--that is if you'll do what I'm going to ask
you, for nobody can grow flowers out of nothing. I want you
to write to John--write straight to him, don't put it in
your letter to Father--and tell him that you have given us
leave to have some of the seedlings out of the frames, and
that he's to dig us up a good big clump of daffodils out of
the shrubbery--and we'll divide them fairly, for Harry is
the Honestest Root-gatherer that ever came over to us. We
have turned the whole of our gardens into a _Paradisi in
sole Paradisus terrestris_, if you can construe that; but we
must have something to make a start. He's got no end of
bedding things over--that are doing nothing in the Kitchen
Garden and might just as well be in our Earthly Paradise.
And please tell him to keep us a tiny pinch of seed at the
bottom of every paper when he is sowing the annuals. A
little goes a long way, particularly of poppies.