“If it wasn’t such a trouble,” she said, “I would like to be beautifully neat like you, Aunt Margaret. Leila thinks she is, but I don’t call it neat just to be slow and dreamy and never sure where you are or where your things are. I think its just as bad as my dashing about and turning things topsy-turvy. I don’t say she tears and spoils her frocks as much as I do, but she forgets quite as badly, and—”
A sigh from Jasper’s corner interrupted her.
“What’s the matter?” she said.
“Oh, I was only thinkin’ I do hope I won’t forget to water the growin’ plants when they come,” replied the little boy.
Chrissie laughed.
“He’s got those plants on the brain, Aunt Margaret,” she said. “You’d better forget about them for just now, Japs,” she went on, turning to him, “for very likely they won’t come for ever so long. Things take such a time by luggage trains.”
Jasper’s face fell—somehow his dream and the talk with his aunt had got mixed up with the thought of the real plants and made him long for them with the curious intensity of longing that one scarcely sympathises with enough in children. But his aunt understood.
“Cheer up, Jasper,” she said. “I shouldn’t wonder if they come to-day—this very afternoon perhaps.”