grew tall and thick. There were water-lilies in shady back-waters, and beautiful gardens sloping down to the water.
At last the boats came to a pretty little town among trees.
"This is where we disembark," said the little girl cousin. "The King lies here to-night at Sir Thomas Bradbury's. And we lie at our grandfather's house. And to-morrow it is the Masque in Sir Thomas's Park. And we are to see it. I am glad thou'st well of thy fever, Richard. I shouldn't have liked it half so well if thou hadn't been here," she said, smiling. And of course that was a very nice thing to have said to one.
"And then we go home to Deptford with thee," said the boy cousin. "We are to stay a month. And we'll see thy galleon, and get old Sebastian to make me one too. . . ."
"Yes," said Dickie, as the boat came against the quay. "What is this place?"
"Gravesend, thou knowest that," said the little cousins, "or hadst thou forgotten that, too, in thy fever?"
"Gravesend?" Dickie repeated, in quite a changed voice.
"Come, children," said the aunt—oh, what a different aunt to the one who had slapped Dickie in Deptford, sold the rabbit-hutch, and shot the moon!—"you boys remember how I showed you to carry my train. And my girl will not forget how to fling the flowers from the gilt basket as the King and Queen come down the steps."
