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“I’m not thinking of that,” said Arthur; “and you’re not selfish, you never are; but she would despise me, and Adela, and Harry, because we’ve taken your game, and got our parts, and you’ve made that preposterous bonnet for Adela to be the Weeding Woman in—-much she’ll weed!—-“

“I shall weed,” said Adela.

“Oh, yes! You’ll weed,–Groundsel!–and leave Mary to get up the docks and dandelions, and clear away the heap. But, never mind. Here we’ve taken Mary’s game, and she hasn’t even got a part.”

“Yes,” said I, “I have; I have got a capital part. I have only to think of a name.”

“How shall you be dressed?” asked Adela.

“I don’t know yet,” said I. “I have only just thought of the part.”

“Are you sure it’s a good-enough one?” asked Harry, with a grave and remorseful air; “because, if not, you must take Francis le Vean. Girls are called Frances sometimes.”

I explained, and I read aloud the bit that had struck my fancy.

Arthur got restless half-way through, and took out the Book of Paradise. His letter was on his mind. But Adela was truly delighted.

“Oh, Mary,” she said, “it is lovely. And it just suits you. It suits you much better than being a Queen.”

“Much better,” said I.

“You’ll be exactly the reverse of me,” said Harry. “When I’m digging up, you’ll be putting in.”

“Mary,” said Arthur, from the corner where he was sitting with the Book of Paradise in his lap, “what have you put a mark in the place about honeysuckle for?”

“Oh, only because I was just reading there when James brought the letters.”

“John Parkinson can’t have been quite so nice a man as Alphonse Karr,” said Adela; “not so unselfish. He took care of the Queen’s Gardens, but he didn’t think of making the lanes and hedges nice for poor wayfarers.”

I was in the rocking-chair, and I rocked harder to shake up something that was coming into my head. Then I remembered.

“Yes, Adela, he did–a little. He wouldn’t root up the honeysuckle out of the hedges (and I suppose he wouldn’t let his root-gatherers grub it up, either); he didn’t put it in the Queen’s Gardens, but left it wild outside—-“

“To serve their senses that travel by it, or have no garden,” interrupted Arthur, reading from the book, “and, oh, Mary! that reminds me–travel—travellers. I’ve got a name for your part just coming into my head. But it dodges out again like a wire worm through a three pronged fork. Travel—traveler—travelers–what’s the common name for the–oh, dear! the what’s his name that scrambles about in the hedges. A flower–you know?”

“Deadly Nightshade?” said Harry.

“Deadly fiddlestick!—-“

“Bryony?” I suggested.

“Oh, no; it begins with C.”

“Clematis?” said Adela.

“Clematis. Right you are, Adela. And the common name for Clematis is Traveller’s Joy. And that’s the name for you, Mary, because you’re going to serve their senses that travel by hedges and ditches and perhaps have no garden.”

“Traveller’s Joy,” said Harry. “Hooray!”

“Hooray!” said Adela, and she waved the Weeding Woman’s bonnet.

It was a charming name, but it was too good for me, and I said so.

Arthur jumped on the rockers, and rocked me to stop my talking. When I was far back, he took the point of my chin in his two hands and lifted up my cheeks to be kissed, saying in his very kindest way, “It’s not a bit too good for you–it’s you all over.”

Then he jumped off as suddenly as he had jumped on, and as I went back with a bounce he cried, “Oh, Mary! give me back that letter. I must put another postscript and another puzzlewig. P.P.S.–Excellent Majesty: Mary will still be our Little Mother on all common occasions, as you wished, but in the Earthly Paradise we call her Traveller’s Joy.”

CHAPTER VII.

There are two or three reasons why the part of Traveller’s Joy suited me very well. In the first place it required a good deal of trouble, and I like taking trouble. Then John was willing to let me do many things he would not have allowed the others to do, because he could trust me to be careful and to mind what he said.