“Well, just once perhaps, if mother says yes, and it’s very warm weather, and you get up very very early.  But you won’t like it quite as much as you think.  Rivers are very cold to bathe in, and those pretty stones at the bottom won’t feel at all nice to your little toes.”

“Oh, but, father,” interrupted Milly, “we could put on our sand shoes.”

“And wouldn’t we splash!” said Olly.  “Nurse won’t let us splash in our bath, father, she says it makes a mess.  I’m sure it doesn’t make a great mess.”

“What do you know about it, shrimp?” said Mr. Norton, “you don’t have to tidy up.  Hush, isn’t that mother calling?  Let’s go and fetch her, and then we’ll go and see Uncle Richard’s farm, where the milk you had for breakfast came from.  There are three children there, Milly, besides cows and pigs, and ducks and chickens.”

Back ran Milly and Olly, and there was mother watching for them with a basket on her arm which had already got some roses lying in it.

“Oh, mother! where did you get those roses?” cried Milly.

“Wheeler, the gardener, gave them to me.  And now suppose we go first of all to see Mrs. Wheeler, and gardener’s two little children.  They live in that cottage over there, across the brook, and the two little ones have just been peeping over the wall to try and get a look at you.”

Up clambered Milly and Olly along a steep path that seemed to take them up into the mountain, when suddenly they turned, and there was another river, but such a tiny river, Milly could almost jump across it, and it was tumbling and leaping down the rocks on its way to the big river which they had just seen, as if it were a little child hurrying to its mother.

“Why, mother, what a lot of rivers,” said Olly, running on to a little bridge that had been built across the little stream, and looking over.

“Just to begin with,” said Mrs. Norton.  “You’ll see plenty more before you’ve done.  But I can’t have you calling this a river, Olly.  These baby rivers are called becks in Westmoreland—­some of the big ones, too, indeed.”

On the other side of the little bridge was the gardener’s cottage, and in front of the door stood two funny fair-haired little children with their fingers in their mouths, staring at Milly and Olly.  One was a little girl who was really about Milly’s age, though she looked much younger, and the other was a very shy small boy, with blue eyes and straggling yellow hair, and a face that might have been pretty if you could have seen it properly.  But Charlie seemed to have made up his mind that nobody ever should see it properly.  However often his mother might wash him, and she was a tidy woman, who liked to see her children look clean and nice, Charlie was always black.  His face was black, his hands were black, his pinafore was sure to be covered with black marks ten minutes after he had put it on.  Do what you would to him, it was no use, Charlie always looked as if he had just come out of the coal-hole.