The tea things were all piled up on the kitchen table, and the children brought them one after another to Aunt Emma to pack them carefully into the big basket.

“Ain’t I a useful boy, Aunt Emma?” asked Olly proudly, coming up laden with a big table-cloth which he could scarcely carry.

“Very useful, Olly, though our table-cloth won’t look over tidy at tea if you crumple it up like that.  Now, Milly, bring me that tray of bread and the little bundle of salt; and, Olly, bring me that bit of butter over there, done up in the green leaves, but mind you carry it carefully.  Now for some knives too; and there are the cups and saucers, Milly, look, in that corner; and there is the cake all ready cut up, and there is the bread and butter.  Now have we got everything?  Everything, I think, but the kettle, and some wood and some matches, and these must go in another basket.”

“Aunt Emma,” said Milly, creeping up close to her, “were you ever a fairy godmother?”

“Not that I know of, Milly.  Would you like me better if I had a wand and a pair of pet dragons, like old Fairy Blackstick?”

“No,” said Milly, stroking her aunt’s hand, “but you do such nice things, just like fairy godmothers do.”

“Do I, little woman?  Aunt Emma likes doing nice things for good children.  But now come along, it’s quite time we were off.  Let us go and fetch father and mother.  Gardener will bring the baskets.”

Such a merry party they were, trooping down to the boathouse.  There lay the boat; a pretty new boat, painted dark blue, with a little red flag floating at her bows, and her name, “Ariel,” written in large white letters on the stern.  And all around the boathouse stretched the beautiful blue water, so clear and sunny and sparkling that it dazzled Milly’s eyes to look at it.  She and Olly were lifted into the boat beside Aunt Emma and mother, father sat in the middle and took the oars, while gardener put the baskets into the stern, and then, untying the rope which kept the boat tied into the boathouse, he gave it a good push with one hand and off she went out into the blue lake, rising up and down on the water like a swan.

“Oh! mother, mother, look up there,” shouted Olly, “there’s the mountain.  Isn’t that where we climbed up this morning?”

Yes, there it was, the beautiful green rocky mountain, rising up above Aunt Emma’s house.  They could see it all so clearly as they got farther out into the lake; first the blue sky, then the mountain with the little white dots on it, which Milly knew were sheep; then some trees, and in front, Aunt Emma’s house with the lawn and the boathouse.  And as they looked all round them they could see far bigger and grander mountains than Brownholme, some near and green like Brownholme, and some far away and blue like the sky, while down by the edge of the lake were hayfields full of flowers, or bits of rock with trees growing on the top of them.  The children hardly knew what it was made them so quiet; but I think it was because everything was so beautiful.  They were really in the hill-fairies’ palace now.