"Oh, but it's so very tiny you couldn't call it a room. The second room is a bedroom, but the best pieces of furniture are kept there. There is a nice chest of drawers and a rocking-chair, and there is a very funny wooden cradle, standing right down on the floor, not at all like Baby's cot. And in this cradle is a nice, fat, bright-eyed little baby."
"A baby," said Peggy, doubtfully.
"Yes, to be sure. There's always a baby in a cottage, unless you'd rather have a very old couple whose babies are grown-up men and women, out in the world."
"No," said Peggy, "I don't want that. A very old woman in a cottage would be razer like a witch, or else it could make me think of Red Riding-Hood's grandmother, and that is so sad. No, I don't mind the baby if it has a nice mamma—but only one baby, pelease, mamma dear. I don't want lots, like the children at the back, they're always tumbling about and sc'eaming so."
"Oh no, we won't have it like that. We'll only have one baby—a very contented nice baby, and its mamma is very nice too. She's got quite a pretty rosy face, and she stands at the door every morning to see her husband go off to his work, and every evening to watch for him coming back again, and she holds the baby up in her arms and it laughs and crows."
"Yes," said Peggy, "that'll do. And the eggs and the chickens, mamma?"
"Oh yes, she takes great care of the cocks and hens, and never forgets to go outside the garden to feed them on the hill, and in the evening they all come home of themselves through the little door in the wall. There's a very nice cat in the cottage too; it sits purring on the front steps on fine days, as if it thought the cottage and garden and everything else belonged to it. And——"
But suddenly the clock struck. Up started mamma.
"Peggy, darling, I had no idea it was so late. And I have to go out the moment after luncheon, and I have still two letters to write. I am a greater baby than any of you! Run off, dear, and tell nurse I want to speak to her before I go out."
"And to-morrow," said Peggy, "to-morrow, will you tell me some more about the white cottage, mamma? It is so nice—I don't think you're a baby at all, mamma. A baby couldn't make it up so lovelily."