“What lovely children they were, and those were very happy days when I watched them flitting about the grounds or making their mud pies in the grapevine arbor. I think the cook must have been very good-natured, for she gave up her muffin-rings, and sponge-cake tins, and iron spoons, and a pan and dipper for the bakery, and even brought a box of dirt, which little Florence called flour; and then the mud pie business began in earnest, and Johnnie’s fat white arms were besmeared above his elbows, and his face was covered with mud, and Florence was not much better, as in her long-sleeved gingham apron she worked industriously at her pies and cakes, which were made into wonderful shapes, and baked on a griddle in the sun. “Sometimes Maggie and Harry, and Grey and Sophie and Louise came to help, but the girls were almost too old for mud pies, and Grey was afraid of soiling his clothes, and Harry fonder of chasing a kitten which had strayed into the yard the day after the children came, and which my mistress kept as a plaything for them, and so Black-Eyes and Bright-Hair had the pies mostly to themselves. It was difficult to tell which Bright-Hair liked the best—the pies or the kitten, which he called the ‘_cart_,’ or the little robins, which were just learning to fly, and who hopped about in a very stupid way, while little Motherdy watched narrowly and nervously to see that no harm came to them, either from the cat, or Bright-Hair, who always started for them when he saw them in the grass, and seemed greatly disturbed because they flew away just before he had reached them. “One afternoon there was a garden party for the children, and I think I never saw a finer sight than it was to see all those little girls and boys in their best clothes, which did not look quite so fresh and nice when they went home, as when they came. Oh, what fine times they had playing upon the lawn, and in the different arbors, which were fitted up with dollies, furniture, and called by different names. There was the ‘Doll’s Drawing-room,’ where the larger dolls sat solemn and still in their chairs, and there was a sleeping room for the dolls, and Apple-Tree Hotel and a restaurant near by, where the children had macaroons, and took weak lemonade through straws; but the thing which pleased them most was the wheel chair, in which all the children had a ride before the day was done.