the morning I have been saying to myself, 'What can have made me dream
of Runswick Bay? What can have brought the events of my short stay in
that quaint little place so vividly before me?' Yes, I am convinced of
it; it was that bunch of yellow ragwort on the mantelpiece in my
bedroom. My little Ella gathered it in the lane behind the house
yesterday morning, and brought it in triumphantly, and seized the best
china vase in the drawing-room, and filled it with water at the tap, and
thrust the great yellow bunch into it.

'Oh, Ella,' said Florence, her elder sister, 'what ugly common flowers!
How could you put them in mother's best vase, that Aunt Alice gave her
on her birthday! What a silly child you are!'

'I'm not a silly child,' aid Ella stoutly, 'and mother is sure to like
them; I know she will. _She_ won't call them common flowers. She
loves all yellow flowers. She said so when I brought her the daffodils;
and these are yellower, ever so much yellower.'

Her mother came in at this moment, and, taking our little girl on her
knee, she told her that she was quite right; they were very beautiful in
her eyes, and she would put them at once in her own room, where she
could have them all to herself.

And that is how it came about, that, as I lay in bed, the last thing my
eyes fell upon was Ella's bunch of yellow ragwort; and what could be
more natural than that I should go to sleep and dream of Runswick Bay?

It seems only yesterday that I was there, so clearly can I recall it,
and yet it must be twenty years ago. I think I must write an account of
my visit to Runswick Bay and give it to Ella, as it was her yellow