36 OVER THE SEA.

 

By the time that Spring came, you would ‘hardly have known the little pale
timid stranger in the merry, rosy child who filled the house with chatter and with
laughter ;

Maisie learnt her lessons with her grandmother, and took her walks with everybody in
the house, especially Dandy. Every sunny morning she and granny took a turn round the
garden, and it was pretty to see them together, the child with her basket, the grandmother
with her stick, and Dandy I am sorry to say generally sitting down with his back to them
to show that he disapproved of the proceeding. How could people prefer to saunter in a
garden when there were fields to scamper in, lanes to sniff in, and roads to trot along?
It was too silly! thought Mr. Dandy.

“Granny,” said Maisie one day as they were walking thus together,“am I a
charge and a burden to am

Granny nearly dropped her
ished to hear the child talk

“Nothing of the sort!”
such a thing into your
pet and my dear child.”
pet, granny?”

you?”

   
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
   
 

stick, she was so aston-
in this way.
she said. “What put
head? You are my
“Tsn’t Dandy your
“Dandy is my pet
too; you are both grand-
“And is this little
granny? You always stop
“Well, dear, if trees
might call this one a pet
planted it before he went
I care for it for his
shall be your tree ss

299

your father’s.

mother’s pets.”
apple-tree your pet,
and look at it so.”
can be pets, you
of mine. Your father
out to India, and so
sake, Maisie, it
now, because it was
“ “Mine, my real
very own? Oh,”
look, isn’t it a pity

granny, how nice! But
that the flowers are all
dropping off?” “The flowers must
fall, dear, for the fruit to come.” 2 “And will the apples
be mine too? Yes? how jolly!” and Maisie jumped about in her joy. “When will
they be ripe, granny?”

“Let me see, when is your birthday? the twenty-eighth of September. I think they
will be ripe on your birthday.”

Maisie’s face fell ; that was a long, long time to wait.

The pleasant summer, Maisie’s first English summer, went by, and every day she
visited her tree, and three*times a week at least she counted the apples on it: fifteen, and
all of them healthy and promising,

If grannies ever did get tired of answering questions, Maisie’s grandmother would have
grown tired of telling her how soon her birthday was coming. At last it came to Next

’