“Nana, isn’t it pretty?  Nana, I think it’s lovely!” said Milly, looking out and clapping her hands.  And it was a pretty garden they could see from the window.  An up-and-down garden, with beds full of bright flowers, and grass which was nearly all moss, and so soft that no cushion could be softer.  In the distance they could hear a little splish-splash among the trees, which came, Milly supposed, from the river mother had told them about; while, reaching up all round the house, so that they could not see the top of it from the window, was the green wild mountain itself, the mountain of Brownholme, under which Uncle Richard’s house was built.

The children hurried through their breakfast, and then nurse covered them up with garden pinafores, and took them to the dining-room to find father and mother.  Mr. and Mrs. Norton were reading letters when the children’s curly heads appeared at the open door, and Mrs. Norton was just saying to her husband: 

“Aunt Emma sends a few lines just to welcome us, and to say that she can’t come over to us to-day, but will we all come over to her to-morrow and have early dinner, and perhaps a row afterward—­”

“Oh, a row, mother, a row!” shouted Olly, clambering on to his mother’s knee and half-strangling her with his strong little arms; “I can row, father said I might.  Are we going to-day?”

“No, to-morrow, Olly, when we’ve seen a little bit of Ravensnest first.  Which of you remembers Aunt Emma, I wonder?”

“I remember her,” said Milly, nodding her head wisely, “she had a big white cap, and she told me stories.  But I don’t quite remember her face, mother—­not quite.”

“I don’t remember her, not one bit,” said Olly.  “Mother, does she keep saying, ‘Don’t do that;’ ‘Go up stairs, naughty boys,’ like Jacky’s aunt does?”

For the children’s playfellows, Jacky and Francis, had an aunt living with them whom Milly and Olly couldn’t bear.  They believed that she couldn’t say anything else except “Don’t!” and “Go up stairs!” and they were always in dread lest they should come across an aunt like her.

“She’s the dearest aunt in the whole world,” said mother, “and she never says, ‘Don’t,’ except when she’s obliged, but when she does say it little boys have to mind.  When I was a little girl I thought there was nobody like Aunt Emma, nobody who could make such plans or tell such splendid stories.”

“And, mother, can’t she cut out card dolls? asked Milly.  Don’t you know those beautiful card dolls you have in your drawer at home—­didn’t Aunt Emma make them?”

“Yes, of course she did.  She made me a whole family once for my birthday, a father and a mother, and two little girls and two little boys.  And each of the children had two paper dresses and two hats, one for best and one for every day—­and the mother had a white evening dress trimmed with red, and a hat and a bonnet.”

“I know, mother! they’re all in your drawer at home, only one of the little boys has his head broken off.  Do you think Aunt Emma would make me a set if I asked her?”