do not talk to
me. And then I will come,

And you shall see with your eyes of blue
What a nice surprise I have got for you."

Maud went away slowly, and when she had reached the door she turned to
say,--

"Be quick, Philip."

And then she went and put on her garden hat and went into the garden,
down the walk between the currant bushes to a piece of waste ground
grown over with short grass, that she called her playground, for here
she could run about, and jump, and skip, and hop, and try to walk upon
stilts, and do all sorts of things; and the gardener did not find fault,
as he did if she skipped in the garden walks, and knocked off a flower
here and there.

"I wonder what the surprise is," said Maud, as she sat down on a bench
to wait for Philip.

Before long she saw him coming along, holding his arms behind him. It
was plain he had got something he did not want her to see.

As he came nearer to her, he called out--

"Three guesses, Maud. What have I got in my hand?"

"Oh, I don't know. Is it a parcel?"

"Yes, it is a brown paper parcel; but what is in it? That is one guess.
Now guess again."

"Is it a wax doll with curly hair?"

"No, not quite so large as that."

"Not so large? then is it a small thing? I have lost my thimble, and
I've broken my china cup, so perhaps you have brought me one. Stop,
stop; I have not had my third guess yet. Let me see: I gave my
skipping-rope to Sally Brown. Oh, Phil, is it a skipping-rope?"

Philip laughed.

"Yes," said he, "it is a skipping-rope with fine painted handles. It is
the prettiest I could find in the shop."

And Philip opened the parcel.

"Oh, what a beauty!" said Maud; "it is far prettier than mine was. And
what nice rope! Oh, Phil, how good of you!"

"Well, now let me see if you can skip with it," said Philip, giving it
into her hands.

And Maud began to skip.

"It is splendid," said she; "it almost skips of itself. I never skipped
with such a skipping-rope before. It is the thing I wanted most, Philip.
How came you to think of it?"

"Why," said Philip, "that was not very hard. You gave your rope to
little Sally because she was a poor little girl, and her mother could
not buy one for her. So I thought it was the best present I could give
you, and the best surprise, and I took a walk into Linton to the
toy-shop there, and though I saw all sorts of toys, I only asked for
skipping-ropes, and I bought the prettiest that the shop-keeper had