“Oh won’t that be the nicest thing!” they cried in a breath.  “Who can go on the pony?”

“Ethelwyn may ride out, and Beth back,” said mother.

“I’ve always been so thankful to think you weren’t born a no and don’t mother,” said Ethelwyn, hugging her.  “Are we going right away?”

“Right away.”

Sure enough there was Joe leading Ninkum, their own pony.  Mother and Beth were to go in the phaeton.

All the way out they played games with the trees and flowers.  Ethelwyn rode alongside the phaeton.

They counted the spots they passed that were purple with thistles, and they were many.  Others were pink and white with clover and daisies.  Their mother told them the story of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, when they drove down the lane bordered with golden Spanish needles.

But they enjoyed the missing word game the most, because it was new.

“It’s your turn to make up a game, mother,” said Beth.

“I will give you lines that rhyme, only I will leave off the last word, after the first line,” said mother, “and you must guess what that word is.”

    “There was a man rode to the mill. 
    The road ran steeply up the—­”

“Hill,” cried Beth.

“Yes; now let sister guess the next.”

    He stopped beside a flowing—­”

“Rill?” asked Ethelwyn, after thinking awhile.

“Yes.”

    “This horse was dry, so drank his—­”

“Fill.”

    “Along there came a girl named—­”

“Jill.”

    “He wished that his was Jack, not—­”

“Will.”

    “For people sometimes called him—­”

“Bill.”

    “This really was a bitter—­”

“Pill.”

    “And made him feel both vexed and—­”

“Ill.”  Mother had to tell them that, because they both guessed sick.

    “He brought his gun along to—­”

“Kill.”

    “A bird to give to Jill a—­”

“Quill?” Ethelwyn guessed after a long time.

    “They lingered long, they lingered—­”

“Till,” and again mother had to tell them this.

    “The sun went down and all was—­”

“Still.”

They had both missed one, so they each had to pay a forfeit or get up a game.

But they were now within sight of Grandmother Van Stark’s fine old colonial house, and there on the porch stood grandmother herself, who had seen them coming, so had come out to meet them.

“Oh isn’t our grandmother pretty though?” said Ethelwyn, as they turned in at the circular driveway.  She had snow white hair, dark eyes and a very stately carriage.

She welcomed them warmly, and invited them into the grand old hall with its white staircase and mahogany rail.

Modern children seemed almost out of place in this old-time house.

“I always seem to think you need short-waisted frocks, and drooping hats like Sir Joshua Reynolds’s, and the Gainsborough pictures,” said their mother laughing.