e known better!)
that she might reply the better.

"Why, Peggy, yes, I do like Froissart, but it never troubles me when
people don't care for my kind of books. You see, there are so many
kinds, such an endless variety, and good in so many different ways. Now
you, for example, would like the Jungle Books, and the 'Cruise of the
_Cachalot_,' and all kinds of books of adventure."

"I don't know what is adventure if Froissart isn't," Bertha put in.

"Yes, but it's all too far away, too remote. I know how Peggy feels,
because I have a cousin who is just that way. She used to think she
should never read anything at all; then one day she got hold of Kipling,
and the worlds opened, and the doors thereof. Just you come to me for
the Jungle Books some day, Innocent, and you'll see. Look here, I want
lots and lots, and again lots more leaves. Where are they all? I don't
see any more, but there must be any quantity. I brought in a whole
copse, myself."

"We put them all into the old swimming-tank, don't you remember? Oh, no;
you went in before we had finished this morning. Well, they are there.
Stay where you are, Snowy, and Peggy and I will get a couple of loads."

The two girls ran down-stairs to the lower floor. Part of this was taken
up, as we have already seen, by dressing-rooms, but it was only a small
part. The larger space was occupied by the great swimming-tank, five
feet deep, and twenty by thirty feet in area. The tank was not used now,
but the water was still connected, and could be turned on by special
permission. Now, accordingly, the water in the bottom was about two feet
deep, and the whole surface was a blaze of autumn colours, great
branches of maple, oak, and ash covering it completely.

"Pretty, isn't it?" said Bertha. "Like a little sunset sea all alone by
itself, without any sun to set. The next question is, how are we to get
at them?"

"Oh, that's easy enough!" said Peggy. "I can reach them easily from the
edge, and I'll hand them over to you."

Suiting the action to the word, she climbed up on the broad marble slab
which formed the edge of the great tank.

Then, bending down, she brought up a great branch of golden maple, fresh
and dripping. She shook it, and a diamond shower fell back on the dark
space left vacant; then another branch floated quietly over and filled
the space again.

"You'll be wet through!" said Bertha. "I don't suppose you care?"

"No, indeed! I'd rather be wet than not, when