Off came the dirty stockings, and Mrs. Tyson slipped on a pair of woolen socks that tickled Olly very much.  They were very thick, and not a bit like his own stockings; and when he got up again he kept turning round and round to look at his legs, as if he couldn’t make them out.

“Do they feel funny to you?” said Mrs. Tyson, patting his shoulder.  “Never you mind, little master; I know they’re nice and warm, for I knitted them myself.”

“Mother buys our stockings in the shop,” said Olly, when they got outside again; “why doesn’t Mrs. Tyson?”

“Perhaps we haven’t so many shops, or such nice ones here, Olly, as you have at Willingham; and the people here have always been used to do a great many things for themselves.  Some of them live in such lonely places among the mountains that it is very difficult for them to get to any shops.  Not very long ago the mothers used to make all the stuffs for their own dresses and their children’s.  What would you say, Milly, if mother had to weave the stuff for it every time you had a new dress?”

“Mother wouldn’t give me a great many new dresses,” said Milly, gravely, shaking her head.  “I like shops best, Aunt Emma.”

“Well, I suppose it’s best to like what we’ve got,” said Aunt Emma, laughing.

Indoors, Olly’s muddy stockings were given to Aunt Emma’s maid, who promised to have them washed and dried by the time they had to go home, and then, when Mrs. Norton had covered up the black spots on his frock with a clean pinafore she had brought with her, Olly looked quite respectable again.

The children thought they had never seen quite such a nice house as Aunt Emma’s.  First of all it had a large hall, with all kinds of corners in it, just made for playing hide-and-seek in; and the drawing-room was full of the most delightful things.  There were stuffed birds in cases, and little ivory chessmen riding upon ivory elephants.  There were picture-books, and there were mysterious drawers full of cards and puzzles, and glass marbles and old-fashioned toys, that the children’s mother and aunts and uncles, and their great-aunts and uncles before that, had loved and played with years and years ago.  On the wall hung a great many pictures, some of them of funny little stiff boys in blue coats with brass buttons, and some of them of little girls with mob-caps and mittens, and these little boys and girls were all either dead now, or elderly men and women, for they were the great-aunts and uncles; and over the mantelpiece hung a picture of a lovely old lady, with bright, soft brown hair and smiling eyes and lips, that looked as if they were just going to speak to the two strange little children who had come for their first visit to their mother’s old home.  Milly knew quite well that it was a picture of great-grandmamma.  She had seen others like it before, only not so large as this one, and she looked at it quietly, with her grave blue eyes, while Olly was eagerly wandering round the room, spying into everything, and longing to touch this, that, and the other, if only mother would let go his hand.