"Like braiding," Greta says with a pleased little smile. If she already knows how to do that, then this should be easy. "You start with three, like this," she picks up two more flowers and holds them all together, the blossoms in a cluster and the stems more or less parallel, "and braid the stems. And then when you start to run out of room to braid, you just add in another one, until the whole thing's long enough to go around your head."

This is sort of exciting, teaching an older child how to do something - especially an older child that she suspects she wouldn't be allowed to talk to if there were grown-ups around to stop her. Greta hopes she doesn't muck it up. "Look." She sets down the flowers and picks up her half-completed crown, instead. "You can see where I put in new ones if you look carefully," she says, holding it out for the other girl to see.