Milly and Olly | Page 4

till they stand up all round us with their dear
kind old faces that mother has loved ever since she was a baby."
The children looked up wonderingly at their mother, and they saw her
face shining and her eyes as bright as theirs, as if she too was a child
going out for a holiday.
"Oh! And, mother," said Olly, "you'll let us take Spot. She can go in my
box."
Now Spot was the white kitten, so Milly and mother began to laugh.
"Suppose you go and ask Spot first, whether she'd like it, Olly," said
Mrs. Norton, patting 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 Fräulein--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
Fräulein, and was always begging flowers from her mother that she
might take them to school for Fräulein'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