. Norton, "so perhaps it doesn't deserve a
better name. And after Bletchley--look again, Milly."

"Rugby," said Milly, reading the names as her mother pointed, "and then
Stafford, and then Crewe--what a funny name, mother!--and then Wigan,
and then Warrington, and then Lancaster. Ox-en-holme, Kendal,
Wind-er-mere. Oh, mother, what a long way! Why, we've got right to the
top of England."

"Stop a bit, Milly, and let me tell you something about these places.
First of all we shall get out of the train at Bletchley, and get into
another train that will go faster than the first. And it will take us
past all kinds of places, some pretty and some ugly, and some big and
some small. At Stafford there is an old castle, Milly, where fierce
people lived in old days and fought their neighbours. And at Crewe we
shall get out and have our dinner. And at Wigan all the trees grow on
one side as if some one had come and given them a push in the night; and
at Lancaster there's another old castle, a very famous one, only now
they have turned it into a prison, and people are shut up inside it.
Then a little way after Lancaster you'll begin to see some mountains,
far, far away, but first you'll see something else--just a little bit of
blue sea, with mountains on the other side of it. And then will come
Windermere, where we shall get out and drive in a carriage. And we shall
drive right into the mountains, Olly, till they stand up all round us
with their dear kind old faces that mother has loved ever since she was
a baby."

The children looked up wonderingly at their mother, and they saw her
face shining and her eyes as bright as theirs, as if she too was a child
going out for a holiday.

"Oh! And, mother," said Olly, "you'll let us take Spot. She can go in my
box."

Now Spot was the white kitten, so Milly and mother began to laugh.

"Suppose you go and ask Spot first, whether she'd like it, Olly," said
Mrs. Norton, patting his sunburnt little face.

CHAPTER II

A JOURNEY NORTH

Milly and Oliver lived at Willingham, a little town in Oxfordshire, as I
have already told you. Their father was a doctor, and they lived in an
old-fashioned house, in a street, with a long shady garden stretching
away behind it. Milly and Oliver loved their father, and whenever he put
his brown face inside the nursery door, two pairs of little feet went
running to meet him, and two pairs of little hands pulled him eagerly
into the room. But they s