right over the stepping-stones and nobody could go across. Milly and
Olly saw the stepping-stones covered with water once or twice while they
were at Ravensnest; but the first evening they saw them the river was
very low, and the stones stood up high and dry out of the water. Milly
thought that stepping-stones were much nicer than bridges, and that it
was the most amusing and interesting way of getting across a river that
she knew. But then Milly was inclined to think everything wonderful and
interesting at Ravensnest--from the tall mountains that seemed to shut
them in all around like a wall, down to the tiny gleaming wild
strawberries, that were just beginning to show their little scarlet
balls on the banks in the Ravensnest woods. Both she and Olly went to
bed after their first day at Ravensnest with their little hearts full of
happiness, and their little heads full of plans. To-morrow they were to
go to Aunt Emma's, and perhaps the day after that father would take them
to bathe in the river, and nurse would let them go and help Becky and
Tiza call the cows. Holidays _were_ nice; still geography lessons were
nice too sometimes, thought Milly sleepily, just as she was slipping,
slipping away into dreamland, and in her dreams her faithful little
thoughts went back lovingly to Fräulein's kind old face, and to the
capes and islands and seas she had been learning about a week ago.

[Illustration: "The flowers Milly gathered for her mother"]

The next morning Mr. and Mrs. Norton were busy indoors till about twelve
o'clock; and the children wandered about the garden with nurse, finding
out many new nooks and corners, especially a delightful steep path which
led up and up into the woods, till at last it took the children to a
little brown summer-house at the top, where they could sit and look over
the trees below, away to the river and the hay-fields and the mountains.
And between the stones and this path grew the prettiest wild