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-- "MY DEAR MOTHER,--This is to tell you that we have made you Queen of the Blue Robe, and that your son Christopher is a dwarf, and we think you'll both be very much pleased when you hear it.

He can do as he likes about having a hump back.
When you come home we shall give faire flowers into your Highnesse hands--that is if you'll do what I'm going to ask you, for nobody can grow flowers out of nothing.

I want you to write to John--write straight to him, don't put it in your letter to Father--and tell him that you have given us leave to have some of the seedlings out of the frames, and that he's to dig us up a good big clump of daffodils out of the shrubbery--and we'll divide them fairly, for Harry is the Honestest Root-gatherer that ever came over to us.

We have turned the whole of our gardens into a _Paradisi in sole Paradisus terrestris_, if you can construe that; but we must have something to make a start.

He's got no end of bedding things over--that are doing nothing in the Kitchen Garden and might just as well be in our Earthly Paradise.
And please tell him to keep us a tiny pinch of seed at the bottom of every paper when he is sowing the annuals.