“An’ me, too,” said Budge.
“You’re two manly little fellows, and I shall have to bring you something real nice,” said Mrs. Burton, kissing her nephews good-by. “There!” she whispered to herself, as she passed out of the garden-gate, “I wonder what my lord and master will say of that victory over imperfect natures, of the sense of the fitness of things? He would have left the boys under the care of the servants; I am proud of having been able to leave them to themselves.”
On her return, two hours later, Mrs. Burton was met at her front door by two very dirty little boys, with faces full of importance and expectancy.
“We done just what you told us, Aunt Alice,” said Toddie. “We didn’t touch a thing, an’ we thought of everything we could do to make the world prettier. D’just come see.”
With a quickened step Mrs. Burton followed her nephews into the back parlor. Furniture, pictures, books, and bric-a-brac were exactly as she left them, but some improvements had been designed and partly executed. A bit of wall several feet long, and bare from floor to ceiling, except for a single picture, had long troubled Mrs. Burton’ artistic eye, and she now found that tasteful minds, like great ones, think alike.
“I think no room is perfect without flowers,” said Budge; “so does papa an’ mamma, so we thought we’d s’prise you with some.”
On the floor, in a heap which was not without tasteful arrangement, was almost a cartload of stones disposed as a rockery, and on the top thereof, and working through the crevices, was a large quantity of street dust. From several of the crevices protruded ferns, somewhat wilted, and bearing evidence of having been several times disarranged and dropped upon the dry soil which partly covered their roots. Around the base was twined several yards of Virginia creeper while from the top sprang a well-branched specimen of the “Datura stramonium” (the common “stink-weed”). The three conservators of the beautiful gazed in silence for a moment, and then Toddie looked up with angelic expression and said:
“Isn’t it lovaly?”
“ISN’T IT LOVALY?”