'Just to keep you from catching cold, miss; and Master Bobby must have one too, bless his heart! He's as white as my apron, and small wonder, after seeing his sister half drowned!'
CHAPTER III
THE BLACK PUPPY
'His eyes so brown, his winning ways,
His faithful heart, command our praise.'
After the adventure at the mill-wheel, Aunt Helen, judging wisely that 'Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do,' sent the children into the fields with Lilian to gather cowslips to make cowslip beer. It was pleasant work wandering among the green meadows picking the sweet-smelling flowers, while the larks sang their loudest overhead, and the little brook babbled by on its path to the river—more especially pleasant when they remembered that by this time next week school would have begun again, with its attendant woes of Latin grammar and French composition.
'I'm sure we must have enough now,' said Lilian, turning out her sixteenth basket of blossoms into the ever-increasing pile in the bakehouse. 'I'm almost tired of gathering them; I shall see nothing but cowslips when I shut my eyes in bed to-night.'
'It will take a fearfully long time to pick them all,' remarked Peggy, starting bravely to work on her task of pulling the yellow pips away from the green calyces. 'It seems almost a shame to put them into a barrel, they look so pretty.'
'You won't say so when you come to taste it,' said unromantic Bobby, who was fond of cool, fizzy drinks in summer.
'Be that you, miss?' said a voice from the region of the door; and the good-natured, freckled face and sandy hair of Joe, the farm-boy, made its appearance, followed by the rest of his lanky person, as he entered slowly, bearing something mysteriously concealed under his coat.
'Whatever have you got there, Joe?' cried three voices at once.