CHAPTER V.
One sometimes thinks it is very easy to be good, and then there comes something which makes it very hard.
I liked being a Little Mother to the others, and almost enjoyed giving way to them.

"Others first, Little Mothers afterwards," as we used to say--till the day I made up that story for them out of the Book of Paradise.
The idea of it took our fancy completely, the others as well as mine, and though the story was constantly interrupted, and never came to any real plot or end, there were no Queens, or dwarfs, or characters of any kind in all Bechstein's fairy tales, or even in Grimm, more popular than the Queen of the Blue Robe and her Dwarf, and the Honest Root-gatherer, and John Parkinson, King's Apothecary and Herbarist, and the Weeding Woman of the Earthly Paradise.
When I said, "Wouldn't it be a good new game to have an Earthly Paradise in our gardens, and to have a King's Apothecary and Herbarist to gather things and make medicine of them, and an Honest Root-gatherer to divide the polyanthus plants and the bulbs when we take them up, and divide them fairly, and a Weeding Woman to work and make things tidy, and a Queen in a blue dress, and Saxon for the Dwarf"-- the others set up such a shout of approbation that Father sent James to inquire if we imagined that he was going to allow his house to be turned into a bear-garden.
And Arthur said, "No.

Tell him we're only turning it into a Speaking Garden, and we're going to turn our own gardens into an Earthly Paradise." But I said, "Oh, James! please don't say anything of the kind.

Say we're very sorry, and we will be quite quiet." And James said, "Trust me, Miss.

It would be a deal more than my place is worth to carry Master Arthur's messages to his Pa." "I'll be the Honestest Root-gatherer," said Harry.