Read "The Wonderful Garden" by Edith Nesbit online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
You can imagine the packing, the running up and down stairs, the difficulty of choosing what to leave behind-for that is, after all, what it comes to when you are going away, much more than the difficulty of choosing what you will take with you. Miss Sandal, surrounded by heaps of toys and books-far too large to have been got into the trunks, even if all the clothes had been left out-at last settled the question by promising to send on, by post or by carrier, any little thing which had been left behind and which the children should all agree was necessary to their happiness. ‘And the leopard-skin takes so much room,' she said, ‘and I believe there are wild-beast-skins as well as stuffed animals at your uncle's house. ' So they left the leopard-skin behind too. There was a good deal of whispered talk and mystery and consulting of books that morning, and Aunt Emmeline most likely wondered what it was all about. But perhaps she didn't. She was very calm.
Anyway, she must have known when, as the cab drew up in front of the door, the three children presented themselves before her with bouquets in their hands.