Katey showed her cousins her various belongings, and said, "I'm afraid I
have not anything so pretty to show you as Tom's birds' eggs. I thought
I would make a collection of wild flowers and leaves, and press them
and fasten them on to paper. So I began with the leaves of the forest
trees, and here they are."

The children looked through the sheets, on which were pressed the leaves
of the oak, the elm, the birch, the willow, and many others besides, all
so different in shape.

"The _leaves_ are very well," said Katey, "but not the _flowers_. I soon
left off pressing them, for the poor flowers looked so wretched, so
unlike the living ones, that I did not care to go on."

"I have felt just the same about some of the things in the museums in
London," said Mary. "They may interest grown-up people, but not us. They
are so dried and withered, that they don't give you much of an idea of
what they were in life. Who would ever guess what a man was like by
seeing a mummy? and some of the things are no better than mummies."

"I am very fond of flowers," said Katey: "they look lovely in their own
places where they grow, but just like mummies, as you say, dried up and
stuck upon paper."

"I'll tell you what: we are going to have tea on the lawn, and after tea
we'll ask mother to show us some sketches she has made of wild flowers.
Now they do give you a real notion of the flowers themselves."

Katey went to the window, and said, "Oh! there is Sarah bringing out the