Milly and Olly | Page 4

his sunburnt little face.
CHAPTER II
A JOURNEY NORTH
Milly and Oliver lived at Willingham, a little town in Oxfordshire, as I have already told you. Their father was a doctor, and they lived in an old-fashioned house, in a street, with a long shady garden stretching away behind it. Milly and Oliver loved their father, and whenever he put his brown face inside the nursery door, two pairs of little feet went running to meet him, and two pairs of little hands pulled him eagerly into the room. But they saw him very seldom; whereas their mother was always with them, teaching them their lessons, playing with them in the garden, telling them stories, mending their frocks, tucking them up in their snug little beds at night, sometimes praising them, sometimes scolding them; always loving and looking after them. Milly and Olly honestly believed that theirs was the best mother in the whole world. Nobody else could find out such nice plays, or tell them such wonderful stories, or dress dolls half so well. Two little neighbours of theirs, Jacky and Francis, had a poor sick mother who always lay on the sofa, and could hardly bear to have her little boys in the room with her. Milly and Oliver were never tired of wondering how Jacky and Francis got on with a mother like that. "How funny, and how dreadful it must be. Poor Jacky and Francis!" It never came into their, heads to say, "Poor Jacky's mother" too, but then you see they were such little people, and little people have only room in their heads for a very few thoughts at a time.
However, Milly had been away from her mother a good deal lately. About six months before my story begins she had been sent to school, to a kindergarten, as she was taught to call it. And there Milly had learnt all kinds of wonderful things--she had learnt how to make mats out of paper, blue mats, and pink mats, and yellow mats, and red mats; she had learned how to make a bit of soft clay look like a box, or a stool, or a bird's nest with three clay eggs inside it; she had begun to add up and take away; and, above all, she had begun to learn geography, and Fr?ulein--for Milly's mistress was a German, and had a German name--was just now teaching her about islands, and lakes, and capes, and peninsulas, and many other things that all little girls have to learn about some time or other, unless they wish to grow up dunces.
As for Milly's looks, I have told you already that she had blue eyes and a turn-up nose, and a dear sensible little face. And she had very thick fair hair, that was always tumbling about her eyes, and making her look, as nurse told her, like "a yellow owl in an ivy bush." Milly loved most people, except perhaps John the gardener, who was rather cross to the children, and was always calling to them not to walk "on them beds," and to be sure not to touch any of his fruit or flowers. She loved her father and her mother; she loved Olly with all her whole heart, though he was a tease, she loved her nurse, whom she and Olly called Nana, and who had been with them ever since Milly was born; and she loved Fr?ulein, and was always begging flowers from her mother that she might take them to school for Fr?ulein's table. So you see Milly was made up of loving. And she was a thoughtful little girl too, tidy with her dress, quick and quiet at her lessons, and always ready to sit still with her fairy-book or her doll, when mother was busy or tired. But there were two things in which Milly was not at all sensible in spite of her sensible face. She was much too ready to cry when any little thing went wrong, and she was dreadfully afraid of creatures of all sorts. She was afraid of her father's big dog, she was afraid of the dear brown cow that lived in the field beyond the garden, she was afraid of earwigs. I am even ashamed to say she was afraid of spiders. Once she ran away as if a lion were behind her from a white kitten that pulled her dress with its frolicsome paws to make her play with it; but that, Milly would tell you, was "when I was little," and she was quite sure she was a good deal braver now.
Now what am I to tell you about Olly?
Olly was just a round ball of fun and mischief. He had brown hair, brown eyes, a brown face, and brown hands. He was always touching