“Oh, jolly!” said Oliver, jumping off his mother’s knee and beginning to dance about.  “And we’ll gather them ourselves—­won’t you let us, mother?”

“But it isn’t a strawberry tea even,” said his mother.  “Now, look here, children, what have I got here?”

“It’s a map—­a map of England,” said Milly, looking very wise.  Milly had just begun to learn geography, and thought she knew all about maps.

“Well, and what happens when father and I look at maps in the summertime?”

“Why,” said Milly, slowly, “you and father pack up your things, and go away over the sea, and we stay behind with nurse.”

“I don’t call that a nice something,” said Olly, standing still again.

“Oh, mother, are you going away?” said Milly, hanging round her mother’s neck.

“Yes, Milly, and so’s father, and so’s nurse”—­and their mother began to laugh.

“So’s nurse?” said Milly and Olly together, and then they stopped and opened two pairs of round eyes very wide, and stared at their mother.  “Oh, mother, mother, take us too!”

“Why, how should father and I get on, travelling about with a pair of monkeys?” said their mother, catching hold of the two children and lifting them on to her knee; “we should want a cage to keep them in.”

“Oh, mother, we’ll be ever so good!  But where are we going?  Oh, do take us to the sea!”

“Yes, the sea! the sea!” shouted Olly, careering round the room again; “we’ll have buckets and spades, and we’ll paddle and catch crabbies, and wet our clothes, and have funny shoes, just like Cromer.  And father’ll teach me to swim—­he said he would next time.”

“No,” said Mrs. Norton, for that was the name of Milly’s and Oliver’s mother.  “No, we are not going to the sea this summer.  We are going to a place mother loves better than the sea, though perhaps you children mayn’t like it quite so well.  We’re going to the mountains.  Uncle Richard has lent father and mother his own nice house among the mountains and we’re all going there next week—­such a long way in the train, Milly.”

“What are mountains?” said Olly, who had scarcely ever seen a hill higher than the church steeple.  “They can’t be so nice as the sea, mother.  Nothing can.”

“They’re humps, Olly,” answered Milly eagerly.  “Great, big humps of earth, you know; earth mixed with stone.  And they reach up ever so high, up into the sky.  And it takes you a whole day to get up to the top of them, and a whole day to get down again.  Doesn’t it, mother?  Fraeulein told me all about mountains in my geography.  And some mountains have got snow on their tops all year, even in summer, when it’s so hot, and we’re having strawberries.  Will the mountains we’re going to, have snow on them?”

“Oh, no.  The snow mountains are far away over the sea.  But these are English mountains, kind, easy mountains, not too high for you and me to climb up, and covered all over with soft green grass and wild flowers, and tiny sheep with black faces.”