in, ma'am, and rest a bit? You'll be maybe tired with walking this hot
day."

So Mr. and Mrs. Norton went into the farmhouse, and the children went
hand-in-hand down the garden, looking for Becky and Tiza.

Suddenly, as they came close to the cherry-tree, they heard a laugh and
a little scuffling, and looking up, what should they see but two little
girls perched up on one of the cherry-tree branches, one of them sewing,
the other nursing a baby kitten. Both of them had coloured print
bonnets, but the smaller had taken hers off and was rolling the kitten
up in it. The little girl sewing had a sensible, sober face; as for the
other, she could not have looked sober if she had tried for a week of
Sundays. It made you laugh only to look at Tiza. From the top of her
curly head to the soles of her skipping little feet, she was the
sauciest, merriest, noisiest creature. It was she who was always playing
tricks on the cows and the horse, and the big sheep-dogs; who liked
nothing so well as teasing Becky and dressing up the kittens, and who
was always tumbling into the milkpail, or rolling downstairs, or losing
herself in the woods, without somehow ever coming to any harm. If she
and Olly had been left alone in the world together they _must_ have come
to a bad end, but luckily each of them had wiser people to take care of
them.

"Becky," said Milly, shyly, looking up into the tree, "will you come
down and say how do you do to us?"

Becky stuck her needle in her work and scrambled down with a red shy
face to shake hands; but Tiza, instead of coming down, only climbed a
little higher, and peeped at the others between the branches.