"Of course I would," said Floss, "and we'd call her Angelina, wouldn't we Carrots? But it's no good thinking about it—I shall never have one like that, unless the fairies send it me!"
"If the fairies sended you money to buy one, wouldn't that do?" said Carrots, staring up in her face with a funny look in his eyes.
But before Floss had time to answer, nurse called to them—they were at the corner of the lane which led to Mrs. White's.
Mrs. White was very kind. She had baked a cake only a day or two before, and cut off a beautiful big piece for each of the children, then she gave them a drink of milk, and they ran out into her little garden to eat their cake and look at the flowers, till nurse had finished her business with the old washerwoman, and was ready to go home.
Floss and Carrots thought a great deal of Mrs. White's garden. Small as it was, it had far more flowers in it than their own garden at the back of the Cove House, for it was a mile or two farther from the sea, and the soil was richer, and it was more sheltered from the wind.
In summer there was what Floss called quite a "buzzy" sound in this little garden—she meant that sweet, lazy-busy hum of bees and butterflies and all sorts of living creatures, that you never hear except in a real old-fashioned garden where there are lots of clove pinks and sweet williams and roses, roses especially, great, big cabbage roses, and dear little pink climbing roses, the kind that peep in at a cottage window to bid you "good morning." Oh, how very sweet those old-fashioned flowers are—though "rose fanciers" and all the clever gardeners we have now-a-days wouldn't give anything for them! I think them the sweetest of all. Don't you, children? Or is it only when one begins to grow old-fashioned oneself and to care more for things that used to be than things that are now, that one gets to prize these old friends so?
I am wandering away from Floss and Carrots waiting for nurse in the cottage garden; you must forgive me, boys and girls—when people begin to grow old they get in the habit of telling stories in a rambling way, but I don't find children so hard upon this tiresome habit as big people sometimes are. And it all comes back to me so—even the old washerwoman's cottage I can see so plainly, and the dear straggly little garden!
For you see, children, I am telling you the history of a real little boy and girl, not fancy children, and that is why, though there is nothing very wonderful about Floss and Carrots, I hope the story of their little pleasures and sorrows and simple lives may be interesting to you.
But I must finish about the visit to the washerwoman in another chapter. I have made this one rather too long already.