"This fancy of mine may, one day or another, cause some learned botanist who is herborising in these parts a hundred years hence, to print a stupid and startling system. All these beautiful flowers will have become common in the country, and will give it an aspect peculiar to itself; and, perhaps, chance or the wind will cast a few of the seeds or some of them amidst the grass which shall cover my forgotten grave!" This was the end of the chapter, and then there was a vignette, a very pretty one, of a cross-marked, grass-bound grave. Some books, generally grown-up ones, put things into your head with a sort of rush, and now it suddenly rushed into mine--"_That's what I'll be!_ I can think of a name hereafter--but that's what I'll do. I'll take seeds and cuttings, and off-shoots from our garden, and set them in waste-places, and hedges, and fields, and I'll make an Earthly Paradise of Mary's Meadow." CHAPTER VI. The only difficulty about my part was to find a name for it. I might have taken the name of the man who wrote the book--it is Alphonse Karr,--just as Arthur was going to be called John Parkinson. But I am a girl, so it seemed silly to take a man's name. And I wanted some kind of title, too, like King's Apothecary and Herbarist, or Weeding Woman, and Alphonse Karr does not seem to have had any by-name of that sort. I had put Adela's bonnet on my head to carry it safely, and was still sitting thinking, when the others burst into the library. Arthur was first, waving a sheet of paper; but when Adela saw the bonnet, she caught hold of his arm and pushed forward. "Oh, it's sweet! Mary, dear, you're an angel. You couldn't be better if you were a real milliner and lived in Paris. I'm sure you couldn't." "Mary," said Arthur, "remove that bonnet, which by no means becomes you, and let Adela take it into a corner and gibber over it to herself. I want you to hear this." "You generally do want the platform," I said, laughing. "Adela, I am very glad you like it. To-morrow, if I can find a bit of pink tissue-paper, I think I could gum on little pleats round the edge of the strings as a finish." I did not mind how gaudily I dressed the part of Weeding Woman now. "You are good. Mary. It will make it simply perfect; and, kilts don't you think? Not box pleats?" Arthur groaned. "You shall have which you like, dear. Now, Arthur, what is it?" Arthur shook out his paper, gave it a flap with the back of his hand, as you do with letters when you are acting, and said--"It's to Mother, and when she gets it, she'll be a good deal astonished, I fancy." When I had heard the letter, I thought so, too. "TO THE QUEEN'S MOST EXCELLENT MAIESTIE--