"And all my flowers are upset, grannie," said a little plaintive voice. "Every one!"
"Pick them up, Willy; do not be so rough. Ah! look!"—for a third and very important personage now toddled into the room, having struggled down from his nurse's arms; and before any one could stop him, Baby Bob had trampled on Ella's flowers, so that scarcely one was fit to present to grannie.
Quite unrepentant, and, indeed, unheeding of the cry—"Oh! Baby Bob! what are you doing?"—Baby Bob stumped up to grannie, and deposited in her lap a very much crushed and flattened crocus, saying—
"Kiss me for it; it's for you."
"You darling!" Lady Burnside said. "Thank you. The poor little flower is sadly squeezed; but it is a token of baby's love all the same."
"Now, grannie," exclaimed Willy, "I want to hear about the cousin, because, you see, I never even thought about her till the other day, and I want to be ready—what do you call it?—prepared for her."
"After all, Willy," said a grave-eyed maiden of twelve, who was lying on a couch in the window, "it won't make much difference to you what Irene is like. A rough and noisy boy like you can't expect a stranger to put up with him as we do."
"She's not a stranger," said Willy. "She is a cousin, and who knows? she may like me better than anybody. She may be a jolly girl, who isn't made of sugar and salt, like Ella!"
"I am not made of sugar and salt," pleaded Ella, who had patiently gathered up her flowers, and was answering the call of their nurse to go with Baby Bob to take off his jacket and hat.
"No, that's true," said Willy; "you are all salt and vinegar, no sugar. Now, grannie, as the little ones are cleared off at last, tell me about the cousin."