She looked at her brother rather mischievously as she said this.
"As it happens, Miss Cissy," said Ted, "there wasn't any snow the Christmas I was born. Mother told me so. And any way, if you liked snowballs I'd let you have them, so I don't see why I shouldn't have flowers."
Cissy threw her arms round Ted's neck and kissed him. "Poor Ted," she said, "zoo shall have f'owers. But Cissy won't have any in her garden if zey isn't planted kick."
"Well, never mind. I'll help you," said Ted; "as soon as I've done my lessons this evening, I'll work in your garden."
"Zank zoo, dear Ted," said Cissy rapturously, and a new hugging ensued, which Ted submitted to with a good grace, though lately it had dawned on him that he was getting rather too big for kissing.
The children's "gardens" were just under the wall that skirted their father's real garden. On the other side of this wall ran the highroad, and the lively sights and sounds to be heard and seen from the top of this same wall made the position of their own bit of ground greatly to their liking. Only the getting on to the wall! There was the difficulty. For Ted it was not so tremendous. He could clamber up by the help of niches which he had managed to make for his feet here and there between the stones, and the consequent destruction to trousers and stockings had never as yet occurred to his boyish mind. But Cissy—poor Cissy! it was quite impossible to get her up on to the wall, and for some time an ambitious project had been taking shape in Ted's brain.
"Cissy," he said, when he was released, "it's no good beginning working at your garden now. We have to go in in ten minutes. I'm going up on the wall for a few minutes. You stay there, and I'll call down to you all I see."
"O Ted," said Cissy, "I wiss I could climb up the wall too."
"I know you do," said Ted. "I've been thinking about that. Wait till I get up, and I'll tell you about it."
Full of faith in Ted's wisdom, little Cissy sat down by the roots of a great elm-tree which stood in her brother's domain. "My tree" Ted had always called it, and it was one of the charms of his property. It was not difficult to climb, even Cissy could be hoisted some way up—to the level of top of the wall indeed, without difficulty, but unfortunately between the tree and the wall there was a space, too wide to cross. And even when the right level was reached, it was too far back to see on to the road.