Well, presently all the packing was done, and Milly and Olly had gone to say good-bye to Fraulein, and to Jacky and Francis. Wednesday evening came, and they were to start early on Thursday morning. Olly begged nurse to put him to bed very early, that he might "wake up krick"--quick was a word Olly never could say. So to bed he went at half-past six, and his head had scarcely touched the pillow two minutes before he had gone cantering away into dreamland, and was seeing all the sights and hearing all the delicious stories that children do see and hear in dreamland, though they don't always remember them when they wake up. Both Milly and he woke up very early on Thursday morning; and directly his eyes were open Olly jumped out of bed like an india-rubber ball, and began to put on his stockings in a terrible hurry. The noise of his jump woke nurse, and she called out in a sleepy voice:

"Get into bed again, Master Olly, directly. It is only just six o'clock, and I can't have you out of bed till seven. You'll only be under my feet, and in everybody's way."

"Nana, I won't be in _anybody's_ way," exclaimed Olly, running up to her and scrambling on to her bed with his little bare toes half way into his stockings. "I can't keep still in my bed all such a long time. There's something inside of me, Nana, keeps jumping up and down, and won't let me keep still. Now, if I get up, you know, Nana, I can help you."

"Help me, indeed!" said nurse, kissing his little brown face, or as much of it as could be seen through his curls. "A nice helping that would be.

Come back to bed, sir, and I'll give you some picture-books till I'm ready to dress you."

So back to bed Master Olly went, sorely against his will, and there he had to stay till nurse and Milly were dressed, and the breakfast things laid. Then nurse gave him his bath and dressed him, and put him up to eat his bread and milk while she finished the packing. Olly was always very quiet over his meals, and it was the only time in the day when he was quiet.

Presently up rattled the cab, and down ran the children with their walking things on to see father and John lift the boxes on to the top; and soon they were saying good-bye to Susan the cook, and Jenny the housemaid, who were going to stay and take care of the house while they were away; and then crack went the whip, and off they went to the station. On the way they pa.s.sed Jacky and Francis standing at their gate, and all the children waved their hats and shouted "Hurrah!

hurrah!" At the station nurse kept tight hold of Olly till father had got the tickets and put all the boxes into the train, and then he and Milly were safely lifted up into the railway carriage, and nurse and father and mother came next, with all the bags and shawls and umbrellas.

Such a settling of legs and arms and packages there was; and in the middle of it "whew" went the whistle, and off they went away to the mountains.

But they had a long way to go before they saw any mountains. First of all they had to get to Bletchley, and it took about an hour doing that.

And oh! what a lovely morning it was, and how fresh and green the fields looked as the train hurried along past them. Olly and Milly could see hundreds and thousands of moon-daisies and b.u.t.tercups growing among the wet gra.s.s, and every now and then came great bushes of wild-roses, some pink and some white, and long pools with yellow irises growing along the side; and sometimes the train went rushing through a little village, and they could see the little children trotting along to school, with their books and slates tucked under their arms; and sometimes they went along for miles together without seeing anything but the white-and-brown cows in the fields, and the great mother-sheep with their fat white lambs beside them. The sun shone so brightly, the b.u.t.tercups were so yellow, the roses so pink, and the sky so blue, it was like a fairy world. Olly and Milly were always shouting and clapping their hands at something or other, for Milly had grown almost as wild as Olly.

Sh-sh-sh-sh went the train, getting slower and slower till at last it stopped altogether.

"Bletchley, Bletchley!" shouted Olly, jumping down off the seat.

"No, my boy," said his father, catching hold of him, "we shall stop five more times before we get to Bletchley; so don't be impatient."

But at last came Bletchley, and the children were lifted out into the middle of such a bustle, as it seemed to Milly. There were crowds of people at the station, and they were all pushing backward and forward, and shouting and talking.

"Keep hold of me, Olly," said Milly, with an anxious little face. "Oh, Nana, don't let him go!"

But nurse held him fast; and very soon they were through the crowd, and father had put them safe into their new train, into a carriage marked "Windermere," which would take them all the way to their journey's end.

"That was like lions and bears, wasn't it, mother?" said Olly, pointing to the crowd in the station, as they went puffing away. Now, "lions and bears" was a favourite game of the children's, a romping game, where everybody ran about and pretended to be somebody else, and where the more people played, and the more they ran and pushed and tumbled about, the funnier, it was. And the running, scrambling people at the station did look rather as if they were playing at lions and bears.

And now the children had a long day before them. On rushed the train, past towns and villages, and houses and trains. The sun got hotter and hotter, and the children began to get a little tired of looking out of window. Milly asked for a story-book, and was soon very happy reading "Snow White and Rose Red." She had read it a hundred times before, but that never mattered a bit. Olly came to sit on nurse's knee while she showed him pictures, and so the time pa.s.sed away. And now the train stopped again, and father lifted Olly on his knee to see a great church far away over the houses, and taught him to say "Lichfield Cathedral."

And then came Stafford; and Milly looked out for the castle, and wondered whether the castles in her story-books looked like that, and whether princesses and fairy G.o.dmothers and giants ever lived there in old times.

After they had left Stafford, Olly began to get tired and fidgety. First he went to sit on his father's knee, then on mother's, then on nurse's--none of them could keep him still, and nothing seemed to amuse him for long together.

"Come and have a sleep, Master Olly," said nurse. "You are just tired and hot. This is a long way for little boys, and we've got ever so far to go yet."

"I'm not sleepy, Nana," said Olly, sitting straight up, with a little flushed face and wide-open eyes. "I'm going to keep awake like father."

"Father's going to sleep, then," said Mr. Norton, tucking himself up in a shady corner; "so you go too, Olly, and see which of us can go quickest."

When Olly had seen his father's eyes tight shut, and heard him give just one little snore--it was rather a make-believe snore--he did let nurse draw him on to her knee; and very soon the little gipsy creature was fast asleep, with all his brown curls lying like a soft mat over nurse's arm. Milly, too, shut her eyes and sat very still; she did not mean to go to sleep, but presently she began to think a great many sleepy thoughts: Why did the hedges run so fast? and why did the telegraph wires go up and down as if they were always making curtsies? and was that really mother opposite, or was it Cinderella's fairy G.o.dmother? And all of a sudden Milly came b.u.mp up against a tall blue mountain that had a face like a man, and cried out when she b.u.mped upon it!

"Crewe, I declare," exclaimed father, jumping up with a start. "Why, Olly and I have been asleep nearly an hour! Wake up, children, it's dinner-time."

Nurse had to shake Olly a great many times before he would open his sleepy eyes, and then he stood up rubbing them as if he would rub them quite away. Father lifted him out, and carried him into a big room, with a big table in it, all ready for dinner, and hungry people sitting round it. What fun it was having dinner at a station, with all the grown-up people. Milly and Olly thought there never was such nice bread and such nice apple-tart. Nothing at home ever tasted half so good. And after dinner father took them a little walk up and down the platform, and at last, just as it was time to get into the train again, he bought them a paper full of pictures, called the _Graphic_, that amused Olly for a long way.

But it was a long long way to Windermere, and poor Milly and Olly began to get very tired. The trees at Wigan did make them laugh a little bit, but they were too tired to think them as funny as they would have thought them in the morning. They are such comical trees! First of all, the smoke from the smoky chimneys at Wigan has made them black, and stopped the leaves from growing, and then the wind has blown them all over on one side, so that they look like ugly little twisted dwarfs, as if some cruel fairy had touched them with her wand. But Olly soon forgot all about them; and he began to wander from one end to the other of the carriage again, scrambling and jumping about, till he gave himself a hard knock against the seat; and that made him begin to cry--poor tired little Olly. Then mother lifted him on to her knee, and said to him, very softly, "Are you very tired, Olly? Never mind, poor little man, we shan't be very long now, and we're all tired, darling--father's tired, and I'm tired; and look at Milly there, she looks like a little white ghost. Suppose you be brave, and try a little extra hard to be good.

Then mother'll love you an extra bit. And what do you think we shall see soon? such a lovely bit of blue sea with white ships on it. Just you shut your eyes a little bit till it comes, I'll be sure to tell you."

And sure enough, after Lancaster, mother gave a little cry, and Olly jumped up, and Milly came running over, and there before them lay the dancing windy blue sea, covered over with little white waves, running and tumbling over each other. And on the other side of it, what did the children see?

"Mother, mother! what is it?" cried Olly, pointing with his little brown hand far away; "is it a fairy palace, mother?"

"Perhaps it is, Olly; anyway, the hill-fairies live there. For those are the mountains, the beautiful mountains we are going to see."

"But how shall we get across the sea to them?" asked Milly, with a puzzled face.

"This is only a corner of the sea, Milly--a bay. Don't you remember bays in your geography? We can't go across it, but we can go round it, and we shall find the mountains on the other side."

Oh! how fast the train seemed to go now that there was something to look at. Everywhere mountains were beginning to spring up. And when they had said good-bye to the sea, the mountains began to grow taller and taller.

What had happened to the houses too? They had all turned white or gray; there was no red one left. And the fields had stone walls instead of hedges; and inside the walls there were small sheep, about as big as the lambs they had seen near Oxford in the morning.

Oxenholme, Kendal, Windermere. How glad the tired children were when the train ran slowly down into Windermere station, and they could jump out and say good-bye to it for a long, long time! They had to wait a little, till father had found all the boxes and put them in the carriage that was waiting for them, and then in they tumbled, nurse having first wrapped them up in big shawls, for it was evening now, and the wind had grown cold. That was a nice drive home among the mountains. How tall and dark and quiet they were. And what was this shining on their left hand, like a white face running beside them, and peeping from behind the trees? Why, it was a lake; a great wide lake, with tiny boats upon it, some with white sails and some without.

"Mother! mother! may we go in those boats some day?" shouted Olly, in a little sharp tired voice, and his mother smiled at him, and said--"Yes, very likely."

How happy mother looked. She knew all the mountains like old friends, she could tell all their names; and every now and then, when they came to a house, she and father would begin to talk about the people who lived in it, just as if they were talking about people they knew quite well. And now came a little town, the town of Wanwick mother called it, right among the mountains, with a river running round it, and a tall church spire. It began to get darker and darker, and the trees hung down over the road, so that the children could hardly see. On they went, and Olly was very nearly asleep again, when the carriage began to crunch over gravel, and then it stopped, and father called out--"Here we are, children, here we are at Ravensnest."

And out they all jumped. What were those bright lights shining? Olly and Milly hardly knew where they were going as nurse took them in, and one of Uncle Richard's servants showed them the way upstairs to the nursery.

Such a nice nursery, with candles lit, and a little fire burning, two bowls of hot bread and milk on the table, and in the corner two little white beds, as soft and fresh as nests! In twenty minutes Olly was in one of these little white beds, and Milly in the other. And you may guess whether they were long about going to sleep.

CHAPTER III

RAVENSNEST

"Poor little souls! How late they are sleeping. They must have been tired last night."

So said nurse at eight o'clock, when she came back into the nursery from a journey to the kitchen after the breakfast things, and found the children still fast asleep; so fast that it looked as if they meant to go on sleeping till dinner-time.

"Milly!" she called softly, shaking her very gently, "Milly, it's breakfast-time, wake up!"

Milly began to move about, and muttered something about "whistles" and "hedges" in her sleep.

Then nurse gave her another little shake, and at last Milly's eyes did try very hard to open--"What is it? What do you want, Nana? Where are we?--Oh, I know!"

And up sprang Milly in a second and ran to the window, her sleepy eyes wide open at last. "Yes, there they are! Come and look, Nana! There, past those trees--don't you see the mountains? And there is father walking about; and oh! do look at those roses over there. Dress me quick, dress me quick, please, dear Nana."

Thump! b.u.mp! and there was Olly out of bed, sitting on the floor rubbing his eyes. Olly used always to jump out of bed half asleep, and then sit a long time on the floor waking up. Nurse and Milly always left him alone till he was quite woke up. It made him cross if you began to talk to him too soon.

"Milly," said Olly presently, in a sleepy voice, "I'm going right up the mountains after breakfast. Aren't you?"

"Wait till you see them, Master Olly," said nurse, taking him up and kissing him, "perhaps your little legs won't find it quite so easy to climb up the mountains as you think."