Then, seeing that Ferdy was looking rather tired, she told Chrissie to run off and get dressed for going a walk.
"I will send Flowers to sit with you," she said, as she stooped to kiss the little invalid, "and in the afternoon Chrissie and I will come back again for an hour or so if you are not asleep."
"I won't be asleep," said Ferdy; "I have slept quite enough to last me all day. Miss Lilly—"
"What, dear?" for the boy's eyes looked as if he wanted to ask her something. "Would you like us to bring you in some flowers?—not garden ones, but wild ones. There are still primroses—and violets, of course—in the woods."
"Yes," Ferdy replied, "I should like them very much. And could you get some moss, Miss Lilly? I would like to arrange them with moss, in that sort of birds'-nesty-looking way."
"I know how you mean," the young lady said. "Yes, we will bring you some moss. And, by the bye, Ferdy, if I had some wire I could show you how to make moss baskets that last for ever so long to put flowers in. You put a little tin or cup to hold water in the middle of the basket—the moss quite hides it,—and then you can always freshen up the moss by sousing it in water."
"What a nice word 'sousing' is," said Ferdy, in his quaint old-fashioned way. "It makes you think of bathing in the sea. Miss Lilly, do you think I'll ever be able to bathe in the sea again? I do so love it. And then there's skating and cricket, and when I go to school there'll be football. Papa was so good at football when he was at school. I wonder—" he stopped short. "I wonder," he went on again, "if I'll ever be able for any of those things. Boys who are all right, well boys, don't think of the difference being like me makes."
"No, they don't," his governess agreed. "But there is still a good long while before you would be going to school, Ferdy dear."