“Why aren’t the strawberries red, mother?” he asked in a discontented voice, as if it must be somebody’s fault that they weren’t red. “Ours at home were ripe.”
“Well, Olly, I suppose the strawberries know best. All I can tell you is, that things always get ripe here later than at Willingham. Their summer begins a little later than ours does, and so everything gets pushed on a little. But there will be plenty by-and-by. And suppose just now, instead of looking at the strawberries, you give just one look at the mountains. Count how many you can see all round.”
“One, two, three, five,” counted Olly. “What great big humps! Should we be able to touch the sky if we got up to the top of that one, mother?” and he pointed to a great blue mountain where the clouds seemed to be resting on the top.
“Well, if you were up there just now, you would be all among the clouds, and it would seem like a white fog all round you. So you would be touching the clouds at any rate.”
Olly opened his eyes very wide at the idea of touching the clouds.
“Why, mother, we can’t touch the clouds at home!”
“That comes of living in a country as flat as a pancake,” said Mr. Norton. “Just you wait till we can buy a tame mountain, and carry it to Willingham with us. Then we’ll put it down in the middle of the garden, and the clouds will come down to sit on the top of it just as they do here. But now, who can scramble over that gate?”
For the gate at the other end of the garden was locked, and as the gardener couldn’t be found, everybody had to scramble over, mother included. However, Mr. Norton helped them all over, and then they found themselves on a path running along the green mountain side. On they went, through pretty bits of steep hay-fields, where the grass seemed all clover and moon-daisies, till presently they came upon a small hunched-up house, with a number of sheds on one side of it and a kitchen-garden in front. This was Uncle Richard’s farm; a very tiny farm, where a man called John Backhouse lived, with his wife and two little girls and a baby-boy. Except just in the hay-time, John Backhouse had no men to help him, and he and his wife had to do all the work, to look after the sheep, and the cows, the pigs, the horse, and the chickens, to manage the garden and the hayfield, and to take the butter and milk to the people who wanted to buy it. When their children grew up and were able to help, Backhouse and his wife would be able to do it all very well; but just now, when they were still quite small, it was very hard work; it was all the farmer and his wife could do to make enough to keep themselves and their children fed and clothed.
Milly and Olly were very anxious to see the farmer’s children and looked out for them in the garden as they walked up to the house, but there were no signs of them. The door was opened by Mrs. Backhouse, the farmer’s wife, who held a fair-haired baby in her arms sucking a great crust of brown bread, and when Mr. and Mrs. Norton had shaken hands with her—“I’m sure, ma’am, I’m very pleased to see you here,” said Mrs. Backhouse. “John told me you were come (only Mrs. Backhouse said ‘coom’), and Becky and Tiza went down with their father when he took the milk this morning, hoping they would catch a sight of your children. They have been just wild to see them, but I told them they weren’t likely to be up at that time in the morning.”
“Where are they now?” asked Mrs. Norton. “Mine have been looking out for them as we came along.”