DOWNSTAIRS in the kitchen Tommy was being comforted by his mother. In the upstairs sitting room Annabel and Miss Margaret sat together and Miss Margaret was wondering how she should begin what she had to say.

Annabel’s expression was one of sullen obstinacy, her lips were still set in a hard, straight line, and her eyes followed the intricacies of the pattern of the Brussels carpet. Miss Margaret hesitated to ask the child if it was she who had torn up the blades of grass, for she feared to prepare the way for a lie.

“I am so sorry you spoiled Tommy’s garden this afternoon, Annabel,” she ventured.

Annabel’s eyes were still on the carpet, and with her toe she outlined a full-blown rose. “It wasn’t a garden; it was just bits of grass,” she asserted.

“It was only bits of grass to you,” Miss Margaret agreed, “but Tommy had watched it and watered it for weeks, and to him it was a real garden. Now you have spoiled it all, and made Tommy very unhappy.”

“I hate him,” said Annabel, defiantly, between closed teeth.

“Yes, I know, of course you do,” and for the first time Annabel looked up.

Then Miss Margaret drew her to her. “I say, Annabel, don’t you think you and Tommy and I might be real good friends now, and all just be very nice to each other?”

Then Annabel’s lips trembled; but no tears fell.

“Does Tommy know?” she asked, and when she was told that he did not she went out of the room and stood at the top of the stairs. Bending forward, her hands resting on her knees, she peered down the steep staircase.

“Tommy,” she called, “Tommy Tregennis,” but there was no response.

“Tommy Tregennis, come here!” The call was louder this time.

“Tommy, Miss Margaret and me wants you.”

At this Tommy’s head was poked round the kitchen door.

All Annabel’s usual diffidence in Tommy’s company had vanished.

“Come here, Tommy!” she insisted, and Tommy, impelled by some new quality in her, walked slowly up the stairs.

“Tommy,” said Annabel, rather hesitatingly, but looking straight into his eyes; “Tommy, I rooted up your garden.”

For the second time that day Tommy hit her quite hard.

“Tommy!” called Miss Margaret, in a stern voice, and Tommy, followed by Annabel, obeyed the summons.

Then Miss Margaret explained to Tommy that he had often been very rude and unkind to Annabel, and that in the future they must all be friends. Whereupon Annabel held out her hand to Tommy, and Tommy promptly pushed it away.

Miss Margaret was wisely blind to this by-play, and began to unfold a plan she had formed.

“I’m thinking about the garden,” she said, meditatively, and the children forgot each other and gave their attention to her.

“I think it will grow again; but it will be very slow. Wouldn’t it be rather nice to plant some other flowers, and take care of them until the grasses come again?”

“How?” demanded Tommy.

“I thought we might have boxes made to stand on the ground under the window, and——”

“Not on my garden,” interrupted Tommy.

“No, most certainly not. Not right on your garden, but quite close up to the windows. One will be an unusual shape, because under the kitchen window there’s the drain to think of, too.” Miss Margaret looked out. “It isn’t raining now; shall we go and measure the lengths of our boxes?”

Downstairs they ran, borrowed Mrs. Tregennis’s inch-tape, and outside under the windows they all three measured.

Here Miss Dorothea, returning from the shelter of the caves, found them and went with them up Main Street to the carpenter’s, where they gave the order for the boxes to be made, painted green, and delivered on Monday without fail.

At the green-grocer’s they ordered good soil for the new garden and sturdy little wall-flower plants full of tightly closed buds. Here, too, Miss Margaret bought Californian oranges, and paid for rosy-cheeked apples to be sent with the soil and plants on Monday.

“Now then, home and tea,” she ordered; but at the cobbler’s window she stopped.

“He lodges with my Aunt Martha,” volunteered Tommy.

But the Blue Lady was not thinking of the cobbler, whose form could be dimly descried through the screen of hanging laces, patches of leather and cards of boot-protectors with which the window was dressed.

“It’s Friday to-day,” she said, impressively.

“Why shouldn’t we have it to-morrow?”

“Have what?” asked Miss Dorothea. “What are you talking about?”

“Why, the pony and trap, of course,” and Miss Margaret pointed to a little card in a corner pane, on which was unevenly printed:

PONY AND GINGLE ON HIRE

“For us,” said Annabel. “I never!” and the children seized each other’s hands in their excitement; but whose hand was put out first this time it was impossible to say.

There was scarcely room for them all in the shop of the cobbler who lodged with Aunt Martha. Miss Margaret bought from him numbers of pairs of cheap boot-laces, for which she had no possible use, because she was a little ashamed of their invasion of the tiny shop, when she learned that the pony and trap did not belong to him, but was advertised by him for a friend who lived at West Draeth, just to do ’e a turn. In the name of his friend, the cobbler promised that if the sun shone the following morning “the gingle ’e should be at the door of Tommy’s house at ten o’clock without fail!”

In spite of his repeated assurance that there should be no mistake, Tommy was seized with a sudden misgiving on the way home and ran back to remind him not to forget.

“I’ve spoken to ’e,” he panted, when he was in line again, “an’ ’e says it’ll be there.” Then “I’m goin’ to tell my Mammy,” he shouted, and was off once more.

When the others reached the house Tommy was in the middle of a voluble and wholly unintelligible explanation, from which Mrs. Tregennis tried vainly to extract some meaning.

“Will you have an orange, Annabel?” asked Miss Margaret at the door.

All Annabel’s affectation had dropped from her this evening: she was just a normal child. As such she nodded, smiling broadly.

“Catch then,” and Annabel made a careful cup of her hands, and caught.

As the ladies went upstairs they were followed by Mrs. Tregennis with the tea.

“Mrs. Tregennis, will you have an orange?”

AT THE COBBLER’S WINDOW SHE STOPPED.