With Cousin Jack clapping his hands and issuing his peremptory orders, the children ran laughing away, and scurried upstairs.

“Did you ever see such ducky people?” said King, as he lingered in the upper hall a minute with his sisters.

“They’re perfectly beautiful!” said Marjorie.  “And I can hardly wait for to-morrow to come to see what Cousin Jack will do next.”

“Let’s go to bed,” said practical Kitty, “and that’ll make to-morrow come quicker.  Good-night, King.”

“Good-night, Kit; good-night, Mopsy,” and with an affectionate tweak of his sisters’ curls.  King went away to his own room, and the girls to theirs.

CHAPTER XIX

FUN AT COUSIN ETHEL’S

Next morning Midget and Kitty were awake early, and found that the sunshine was fairly pouring itself in at their bay window.

“I don’t believe it’s time to get up,” said Midget, as she smiled at Kitty across the room.

“No; Mother said she’d call us when it was time,” returned Kitty, cuddling down under her rosebudded coverlet.

But just then something flew in at the open window, and landed on the floor between their two beds.

“What’s that?” cried Marjorie, startled.  And then she saw that it was a large red peony blossom.  It was immediately followed by another, and that by a branch of lilac blooms.  Then came hawthorn flowers, syringa, Rose of Sharon, roses, bluebells, and lots of other flowers, and sprays of green, until there was a perfect mound of flowers in the middle of the room, and stray blossoms fallen about everywhere.

“It’s Cousin Jack, of course,” cried Marjorie.  “Let’s get up, Kit.”

The girls sprang out of bed, and throwing on their kimonas, ran and peeped out of the window, from behind the curtains.

Sure enough, Cousin Jack was standing down on the lawn, and when he saw the smiling faces, he began to chant a song to them: 

“Susannah and Mehitabel, come out and play! 
 For it’s a lovely, sunny, shiny day in May;
 And Cousin Jack is waiting here for you,
 So hurry up, and come along, you two!”

Marjorie and Kitty could dress pretty quickly when they wanted to, so they were soon ready, and in fresh pink gingham dresses and pink hair-ribbons, they ran downstairs and out on to the lawn.  King was already there, for Cousin Jack had roused him also.

“Hello, Kiddy-widdies!” Cousin Jack called out, as the girls flew toward him.  “However did you get bedecked in all this finery so quickly?”

“This isn’t finery,” said Kitty; “these are our morning frocks.  But say, Cousin Jack, how did you manage to throw those flowers in at our window from down here?”

“Oh, I’m a wizard; I can throw farther than that.”

“Yes, a ball,” agreed Marjorie; “but I don’t see how you could throw flowers.”

“Oh, I just gave them to the fairies, and they threw them in,” and Cousin Jack wouldn’t tell them that really he had thrown them from a nearby balcony, and gone down to the lawn afterward.