"Well, Milly, suppose you begin with Becky, and poor Tiza too, indeed. I wonder whether a pair of little people could make a scrap-book for Becky to look at when she is getting better?" "Oh yes, yes!" said Milly, joyfully, "I've got ever so many pictures in mother's writing-book, she let me cut out of her 'Graphics,' and Olly can help paste; can't you, Olly?" "Olly generally pastes his face more than anything else," said Mr. Norton, giving a sly pull at his brown curls. "If I'm not very much mistaken, there is a little fairy pasting up your eyes, old man." "I'm not sleepy, not a bit," said Olly, sitting bolt upright and blinking very fast. "I think you're not sleepy, but just asleep," said Mr. Norton, catching him up in his arms, and carrying him to his mother to say good-night. Milly went very soberly and quietly up to bed, and for some little time she lay awake, her little heart feeling very sore and heavy about the "sad things" in the world. Then with her thoughts full of Becky she fell asleep. So ended Milly's birthday, a happy day and a sorrowful day, all in one. When Milly grew older there was no birthday just before or after it she remembered half so clearly as that on which she was seven years old. CHAPTER X LAST DAYS AT RAVENSNEST On Friday morning the children and their father trudged up very early to the farm to get news of Becky. She had had a bad night Mr. Backhouse said, but she had taken some milk and beef-tea; she knew her father and mother quite well, and she had asked twice for Tiza. The doctor said they must just be patient. Quiet and rest would make her well again, and nothing else, and Tiza was not to go home for a day or two. As for poor Tiza, a long sleep had cheered her up greatly, and when Milly and Olly went to take her out with them after breakfast, they found her almost as merry and chatty as usual. But she didn't like being kept at the Wheelers's, though they were very kind to her; and it was all Mrs. Wheeler could do to prevent her from slipping up to the farm unknown to anybody. "They don't have porridge for breakfast," said Tiza, tossing her head, when she and Milly were out together. "Mother always gives us porridge. And I won't sit next Charlie. He's always dirtying hisself. He stickied hisself just all over this morning with treacle. Mother would have given him a clout."