windows; and on the damp and shady ground only violets grew. Yet, with
the love children bear to the limited and compact, the four had chosen
their own little plots here rather than in the big garden at the back of
the house; and many were the times they had all begun anew to dig and to
rake. But if Laura's energy did not fizzle out as quickly as usual--she
was the model for the rest--Mother was sure to discover that it was too
cramped and dark for them in there, and send Sarah to drive them off.

Here, safely screened from sight, Laura sat on a bench and made up her
bouquet. When it was finished--red and white in the centre with a
darker border, the whole surrounded by a ring of violet leaves--she
looked about for something to tie it up with. Sarah, applied to, was
busy ironing, and had no string in the kitchen, so Pin ran to get a reel
of cotton. But while she was away Laura had an idea. Bidding Leppie hold
the flowers tight in both his sticky little hands, she climbed in
at her bedroom window, or rather, by lying on the sill with her legs
waving in the air, she managed to grab, without losing her balance, a
pair of scissors from the chest of drawers. With these between her teeth
she emerged, to the excited interest of the boys who watched her
open-mouthed.

Laura had dark curls, Pin fair, and both wore them flapping at their
backs, the only difference being that Laura, who was now twelve years
old, had for the past year been allowed to bind hers together with a
ribbon, while Pin's bobbed as they chose. Every morning early, Mother
brushed and twisted, with a kind of grim pride, these silky ringlets
round her finger. Although the five odd minutes the curling occupied
were durance vile to Laura, the child was proud of her hair in her own
way; and when in the street she heard some one say: "Look--what pretty
curls!" she would give her head a toss and send them all a-rippling. In