[Illustration: "Haymaking"]
And then! crown of delights! came the haymaking. There were long fine
days, when the six small creatures--Milly, Olly, Becky, Tiza, Bessie,
and Charlie--followed John Backhouse and his men about in the hayfields
from early morning till evening, helping to make the hay, or simply
rolling about like a parcel of kittens in the flowery fragrant heaps.
Aunt Emma was often at Ravensnest, and the children learned to love her
better and better, so that even wild little Olly would remember to bring
her stool, and carry her shawl, and change her plate at dinner; and
Milly, who was always clinging to somebody, was constantly puzzled to
know whose pocket to sit in, mother's or Aunt Emma's.
Then there was the farmyard, the cows, and the milking, and the
chickens. Everything about them seemed delightful to Milly and Olly, and
the top of everything was reached when one evening John Backhouse
mounted both the children on his big carthorse Dobbin, and they and
Dobbin together dragged the hay home in triumph.
And now they had only one week more to stay at Ravensnest. But that week
was a most important week, for it was to contain no less a day than
Milly's birthday. Milly would be seven years old on the 15th of July,
and for about a week before the 15th, Milly's little head could think of
nothing else.
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