Some books, generally grown-up ones, put things into your head with a
sort of rush, and now it suddenly rushed into mine--"_That's what I'll
be!_ I can think of a name hereafter--but that's what I'll do. I'll
take seeds and cuttings, and off-shoots from our garden, and set them
in waste places, and hedges, and fields, and I'll make an Earthly
Paradise of Mary's Meadow."
CHAPTER VI.
The only difficulty about my part was to find a name for it. I might
have taken the name of the man who wrote the book--it is Alphonse
Karr,--just as Arthur was going to be called John Parkinson. But I am
a girl, so it seemed silly to take a man's name. And I wanted some
kind of title, too, like King's Apothecary and Herbarist, or Weeding
Woman, and Alphonse Karr does not seem to have had any by-name of that
sort.
I had put Adela's bonnet on my head to carry it safely, and was still
sitting thinking, when the others burst into the library.
Arthur was first, waving a sheet of paper; but when Adela saw the
bonnet, she caught hold of his arm and pushed forward.
"Oh, it's sweet! Mary, dear, you're an angel. You couldn't be better
if you were a real milliner and lived in Paris. I'm sure you
couldn't."
"Mary," said Arthur, "remove that bonnet, which by no means becomes
you, and let Adela take it into a corner and gibber over it to
herself.
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