Last Words: A Final Collection of StoriesEwing, Juliana Horatia
General
Last Words: A Final Collection of Stories
Ewing, Juliana Horatia
Children's stories; Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction
That settled the question. Nothing could be so nice as to have Mother
in the game, and the plan provided for Christopher also. I had no wish
to be Queen, as far as that went. Dressing up, and walking about the
garden would be no fun for me. I really had looked forward to clearing
away big baskets full of weeds and rubbish, and keeping our five
gardens and the paths between them so tidy as they had never been kept
before. And I knew the weeds would have a fine time of it with Adela,
as Weeding Woman, in a tissue paper bonnet!
But one thing was more important than tidy gardens--not to be
selfish.
I had been left as Little Mother to the others, and I had been lucky
enough to think of a game that pleased them. If I turned selfish now,
it would spoil everything.
So I said that Arthur's idea was excellent; that I had no wish to be
Queen, that I thought I might, perhaps, devise another character for
myself by-and-by; and that if the others would leave me alone, I would
think about it whilst I was making Adela's bonnet.
The others were quite satisfied. Father says people always are
satisfied with things in general, when they've got what they want for
themselves, and I think that is true.
I got the tissue paper and the gum; resisted Adela's extreme desire to
be with me and talk about the bonnet, and shut myself up in the
library.
I got out the _Book of Paradise_ too, and propped it up in an
armchair, and sat on a footstool in front of it, so that I could read
in between whiles of making the bonnet. There is an index, so that you
can look out the flowers you want to read about. It was no use our
looking out flowers, except common ones, such as Harry would be
allowed to get bits of out of the big garden to plant in our little
gardens, when he became our Honest Root-gatherer.
I looked at the Cowslips again. I am very fond of them, and so they
say, are nightingales; which is, perhaps, why that nightingale we
know lives in Mary's Meadow, for it is full of cowslips.
The Queen had a great many kinds, and there are pictures of most of
them. She had the Common Field Cowslip, the Primrose Cowslip, the
Single Green Cowslip, Curled Cowslips, or Galligaskins, Double
Cowslips, or Hose-in-Hose, and the Franticke or Foolish Cowslip, or
Jackanapes on Horsebacke.
I did not know any of them except the Common Cowslip, but I remembered
that Bessy's aunt once told me that she had a double cowslip. It was
the day I was planting common ones in my garden, when our gardener
despised them. Bessy's aunt despised them too, and she said the double
ones were only fit for a cottage garden. I laughed so much that I tore
the canary-colored string as I was gumming it on to the bonnet, to
think how I could tell her now that cowslips are Queen's flowers, the
common ones as well as the Hose-in-Hose.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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