"Maybe Daddy and Mother will take us to see Dick and Jack sometime, Berta; and then you will ride us in your billy cart, won't you, Dick? And when you come to see us at Bird-a-Lea, you can have a nice ride in our wheely-ba'l, so you can."
They next marked the garden benches and porch chairs.
"And I'se quite sure Daddy will say we must take this nice white walk. They's only all little stones on the walks at Bird-a-Lea."
"That's gravel. We have that on all our walks and on the driveway. Everybody in the country has that 'stead of walks like this."
They went around and around the old-fashioned yard, putting colored marks on everything they thought should be taken to the new home, until there was very little left of their sticks of chalk.
"I know what ought to be marked. Ourselves. We're not going to be left behind."
"Oh, yes, Dick, let's mark our own selfs," cried the twins; and when poor old Aunt Mandy came to call them to get washed before luncheon, she threw up her hands in horror at sight of their faces streaked with red, blue, and yellow, in real Indian style.
After luncheon, Mr. Selwyn was taken out to see the "s'prise," and he had to turn aside and cough many times when he saw even the leaves of certain plants in the garden plainly marked.
"In course, Daddy, we know they's a big, big garden of most beauty flowers at Bird-a-Lea; but p'raps they isn't nenny jes' 'zactly like these. And Beth and I can't 'member if they's nenny Kismus trees out there; so we thinked it would be better to take this nice little one so Sandy Claws will find it when he comes, you know."
"Oho! trust him to find dozens of Christmas trees ever so much larger and finer than this one in the country around our new home, pet. Santa Claus does not depend on city yards and parks for his Christmas trees. No, indeed!"