“No, Milly, not quite,” said Mrs. Norton, laughing, “but it’s very easy to go a long way in a pretendy drive.  It would only take us about ten minutes that way to get to the other side of the world.”

“How long would it take really?” asked Olly.

“About three months.”

“If we could fly up, and up, ever so far,” said Olly, standing on tiptoe, and stretching out his little arms as high as they would reach, “it wouldn’t take us long.  Mother, don’t you wish you was a bird?”

“No, I don’t think so, Olly; why do you?”

“Because I should like to go so krick.  Mother, the fly-catchers do fly so krick; I can’t see them sometimes when they’re flying, they go so fast.  Oh, I do wish father would let me get up a ladder to look at them.”

“No Olly, you’ll frighten them,” said Milly, putting on her wise face.  “Besides, father says you’re too little, and you’d tumble down.”

Olly looked as if he didn’t believe a word of it, as he generally did when Milly talked wisely to him; but just then he found that mother had put into his lap a whole basketful of letters to tear up, and that interested him so much that he forgot the fly-catchers.  Nurse cut out a most fashionable blue dress for Katie, and Milly was quite happy all the rest of the morning in running up the seams and hemming the bottom.  So the morning passed away.  After dinner there were the toys to play with, and Katie’s frock to try on, for nurse had taken a turn at the body while Milly had been making the skirt.  It fitted very well, and Milly had only the band to put on and the sleeves to make before it would be quite finished.  Then nurse promised to put a little white lace round the neck, and cut out a blue sash, that Katie might be quite turned into an elegant young lady.  Tea came very soon, and when it was cleared away father and mother came into the big kitchen without a fireplace, next to the children’s room, and they all had a splendid romp.  Mr. Norton made himself into a tiger, with a tiger-skin in the hall, that Uncle Richard had brought home from India, and Olly shot him all over with a walking-stick from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail.  When they were tired of this, mother set them to play hide-and-seek, and Milly hid herself in such out-of-the-way cupboards, and squeezed herself into such small corners, that mother said she was like a needle in a bundle of hay—­there was no finding her.

Seven o’clock came before they had time to think about it, and the children went chattering and skipping up to bed, though on fine evenings they had been staying up much later.  How the rain did rattle on the window while they were undressing.

“Oh, you tiresome rain,” said Milly, standing by the window in her nightdress, and gazing up into the sky.  “Where does it all come from, I wonder?  Won’t it be wet to-morrow, Nana? and oh, what is that roaring over there?”

“That’s the beck,” said nurse, who was brushing Olly’s hair, and trying hard to make him stand still for two minutes.