Brown is not used to educating children, you
know, that she fancies one wants a reward for telling the truth; I
told her so, but Mary thought it would vex her, and stopped my mouth.
Well, then we young ones--that is, Charlie, and Sylvia, and Armyn,
and I--drank tea out on the lawn. Mary had to sit up and be company;
but we had such fun! There was a great old laurel tree, and Armyn
put Sylvia and me up into the fork; and that was our nest, and we
were birds, and he fed us with strawberries; and we pretended to be
learning to fly, and stood up flapping our frocks and squeaking, and
Charlie came under and danced the branches about. We didn't like
that; and Armyn said it was a shame, and hunted him away, racing all
round the garden; and we scrambled down by ourselves, and came down
on the slope. It is a long green slope, right down to the river, all
smooth and turfy, you know; and I was standing at the top, when
Charlie comes slyly, and saying he would help the little bird to fly,
gave me one push, and down I went, roll, roll, tumble, tumble, till
Sylvia REALLY thought she heard my neck crack! Wasn't it fun?"
"But the river, my dear!" said Lady Jane, shuddering.
"Oh! there was a good flat place before we came to the river, and I
stopped long before that! So then, as we had been the birds of the
air, we thought we would be the fishes of the sea; and it was nice
and shallow, with dear little caddises and river cray-fish, and great
British pearl-shells at the bottom.
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