chrysanthemums to be planted there. He thinks of
nothing but his greenhouse.'

The beady-violet-blue-glassed lady snorted, and said she didn't know
what we were coming to, and she would have just half a cup, please, with
not quite so much milk, thank you very much.

Now what would you have done? Minded your own business most likely, and
not got into trouble at all. Not so Amabel. Enthusiastically anxious to
do something which should make the great-aunt see what a thoughtful,
unselfish, little girl she really was (the aunt's opinion of her being
at present quite otherwise), she got up very early in the morning and
took the cutting-out scissors from the work-room table drawer and stole,
'like an errand of mercy,' she told herself, to the greenhouse where she
busily snipped off every single flower she could find. MacFarlane was at
his breakfast. Then with the points of the cutting-out scissors she made
nice deep little holes in the flower-bed where the chrysanthemums ought
to have been, and struck the flowers in--chrysanthemums, geraniums,
primulas, orchids, and carnations. It would be a lovely surprise for
Auntie.

Then the aunt came down to breakfast and saw the lovely surprise.
Amabel's world turned upside down and inside out suddenly and
surprisingly, and there she was, in Coventry, and not even the housemaid
would speak to her. Her great-uncle, whom she passed in the hall on her
way to her own room, did indeed, as he smoothed his hat, murmur, 'Sent
to Coventry, eh? Never mind, it'll soon be over,' and went off to the
City banging the front door behind him.

He meant well, but he did not understand.

Amabel understood, or she thought she did, and knew in her miserable
heart that she was sent to Coventry for the last time, and that this
time she would stay there.

'I don't care,' she said quite untruly. 'I'll never try to be kind to
any one again.' And that wasn't true either. She was to spend the whole
day alone in the best bedroom, the one with the four-post bed and the
red curtains and the large wardrobe with a looking-glass in it that you
could see yourself in to the very ends of your strap-shoes.

The first thing Amabel did was to look at herself in the glass. She was
still sniffing and sobbing, and her eyes were swimming in tears, another
one rolled down her nose as she looked--that was very interesting.
Another rolled down, and that was the last, because as soon as you get
interested in watching your tea