Mother was very much surprised by Arthur's letter, but not so much puzzled as he expected.

She knew Parkinson's _Paradisus_ quite well, and only wrote to me to ask, "What are the boys after with the old books?
Does your Father know ?" But when I told her that he had given us leave to be in the library, and that we took great care of the books, and how much we enjoyed the ones about gardening, and all that we were going to do, she was very kind indeed, and promised to put on a blue dress and lace ruffles and be Queen of our Earthly Paradise as soon as she came home.
When she did come home she was much better, and so was Chris.

He was delighted to be our Dwarf, but he wanted to have a hump, and he would have such a big one that it would not keep in its place, and kept slipping under his arm and into all sorts of queer positions.
Not one of us enjoyed our new game more than Chris did, and he was always teasing me to tell him the story I had told the others, and to read out the names of the flowers which "the real Queen" had in her "real paradise." He made Mother promise to try to get him a bulb of the real Dwarf Daffodil as his next birthday present, to put in his own garden.
"And I'll give you some compost," said Arthur.

"It'll be ever so much better than a stupid book with 'stuff' in it." Chris did seem much stronger.

He had colour in his cheeks, and his head did not look so large.