knife to keep the onion-juice from making her cry, and
asked her to make him a small basin of paste, her kitchen majesty
uttered a loud snort.

"Which I just shan't," she cried; "and if your Mar was at home you
wouldn't dare to ask. I never did see such a tiresome, worriting boy as
you are, Master Ned. You're always wanting something when I'm busy; and
what your master's a-thinking about to give you such long holidays at
midsummer I don't know."

"They aren't long," said Ned, indignant at the idea of holidays being
too long for a boy of eleven.

"Don't you contradict, sir, or I'll just tell your Mar; and the sooner
you're out of my kitchen the better for you. Be off, both of you!"

It was on Tizzy's little red lips to say: "Oh, please do make some
paste!" but she was not peeling onions, and had no knife with a piece of
bread-crumb at the end to keep the tears from coming. So come they did,
and sobs with them to stop the words.

"Never mind, Tiz," cried Ned, lifting her on to a chair. "Here, get on
my back and I'll carry you. Cook's in a tantrum this morning."

Tizzy placed her arms round her brother's neck and clung tightly while
he played the restive steed, and raised Cook's ire to red-hot point by
purposely kicking one of the Windsor chairs, making it scroop on the
beautifully-white floor of the front kitchen, and making the queen of
the domain rush out at him, looking red-eyed and ferocious, for the
onion-juice had affected her.

"Now, just you look here, Master Ned."

But Ned didn't stop to look; for, after the restive kick at the chair,
he had broken into a canter, dashed down the garden and through the gate
into the meadow, across which he now galloped straight for the new
haystack, for only a week before that meadow had been forbidden ground
and full of long, waving, flowery strands.

The grasshoppers darted right and left from the brown patches where the
scythes had left their marks; the butterflies fled in their butterfly
fashion.

So did a party of newly-fledged sparrowkins, and, still playing the
pony, Ned kept on, drawing his sister's attention to the various
objects, as he made for the long row of Lombardy poplars which grew so
tall and straight close to the deep river-side, and gave the name
"Lombardy" to the charming little home.

But it was all in vain; nothing would pacify the sobbing child, not even
the long red-and-yellow monkey barge gliding along the river, steered by
a woman in