“I am very fond of flowers,” said Katey:  “they look lovely in their own places where they grow, but just like mummies, as you say, dried up and stuck upon paper.”

“I’ll tell you what:  we are going to have tea on the lawn, and after tea we’ll ask mother to show us some sketches she has made of wild flowers.  Now they do give you a real notion of the flowers themselves.”

Katey went to the window, and said, “Oh! there is Sarah bringing out the table for tea already.  Let us go downstairs into the garden.”

So they all went down to watch Sarah lay the cloth, and put the bread and butter and cake on the table, then the milk and sugar, and last of all she brought the teapot.

“Here comes Aunt Lizzie,” said Annie; and all the children joined in the request that when tea was over she would show them her paintings of flowers.

“To be sure I will,” she said; “and we will look at them out of doors as soon as the tea-table is cleared.”

“I do like having tea out of doors,” said Annie; “we can never have it in London, however hot it is.”

[Illustration:  THE TEA ON THE LAWN. Page 82.]

“We cannot have it for very long in the country either,” said Aunt Lizzie, “because our weather is so changeable.  Sometimes we have cold winds with bright sunshine, or it rains, or the grass is damp.  Still, during the long summer days we can frequently manage it; but it is not always summer even in the country.”

“Do the woods seem very dreary to you in the winter, aunt?”

“No; I have known and loved them all my life, and they have a very different look in winter from what they have in summer.”

“But they look so bare when the leaves are gone,” said Annie.

“Yes; but you can see the shapes of the trunks and branches, down to the little twigs.  You can tell the name of the tree from its skeleton, for each has its own form—­the sturdy oak, the stiff poplar, the drooping willow, and the elegant silver birch.  You should see them after a fall of snow.  Each tree bears the weight of snow after a different fashion—­like itself.

“In fact the woods during a bright hard frost are as good as Fairyland.  The brown dead oak leaves lying on the ground are fringed all round the edges with what looks like small diamonds sparkling in the sun.  The frost takes every blade of grass, every twig and straw, and covers them with glittering crystal, and the whole air is clear and bright.”

“We have some very beautiful days in winter,” said Katey.

“Yes,” said her mother; “calm, still, cloudless days—­like midsummer, only of course colder.  Not very often, it is true, but occasionally.