Odd Part 6

'I don't much like dolls,' said Betty, with a decided shake of her curly head; 'I like something really alive, something that moves by itself.

There's a big sheepdog at our farm called Rough. I sometimes get hold of him for a game, but he likes Douglas better than me. Sam says he's always fond of boys.'

'Would you like to come inside my gate?' asked the lady, looking down upon Betty with a strange tenderness in her eyes, though her lips were still grave and stern.

Betty slipped her hand confidingly into hers.

'Yes, please; and will you tell me who you are? I think you're rather like a lady I'm trying to find. She teaches children, a governess she is, and she's old and young together. You're much more like her than Mrs. Giles is.'

But the lady did not satisfy Betty's curiosity; she only said,--

'I have never taught any children in my life,' and led her up the gra.s.sy walk to the gate in the wall.

'I am only going to let you stand inside for a moment, and then you must run away. And you must never come over the wire netting in the wood again. You and your brothers and sister can play in the other part of the wood, but I will not have children running over my private walks.'

She opened the gate, and Betty saw a lovely flower garden, with a smooth, gra.s.sy lawn, and away in the distance a great white house. The flowers were exquisite, and to Betty's London eyes they were a feast of delight.

Her little face flushed with pleasure.

'Do you live here?' she asked. 'How happy you must be!'

'Do you like it better than my wood?'

Betty turned from the blaze of sunshine and brightness to look at the cool green glade behind her. She did not answer for a minute, then she said, pointing with her small finger down the gra.s.sy avenue,--

'It's something like church down there, it looks so quiet. But this garden is like heaven, I think.'

The lady smiled. 'I will give you any flower you like to take away, so choose.'

Betty was not long in making her choice. There were some beautiful white lilies close by--lilies that might have come from the same plant as that one lying between the little girl's hands in church.

'I should like one of those, please,' she said, with sparkling eyes.

She was given, not one, but several, and then was dismissed.

'And I shall never see you again,' Betty said, as she put up her mouth for a kiss. She did not say it regretfully, only as if stating a fact.

The lady stooped and kissed her. 'Not unless I send for you,' she said.

'Can you find your way back?'

Betty nodded brightly, and ran off. The lady stood watching her little figure for some minutes, then she gave a deep sigh, and her face relapsed into its usual stern and immovable expression as she entered her garden and locked the gate behind her.

Betty ran on as fast as she could to join the others. When she reached the oak tree, Douglas and Molly were already there, seated on the ground, busily employed in dividing the provisions for the feast. They exclaimed at the sight of her flowers.

'I've had a lovely adventure,' said Betty. 'Where are Bobby and Billy?'

'We don't know,' said Molly, rising to her feet and looking anxious.

'I'm sure they ought to be here by this time.'

'Perhaps they're lost,' Douglas suggested cheerfully; 'I was hoping some of us would get lost, and then we should have the fun of finding them.

We'll go in a few minutes and look for them. Would you like to hear where we have been, Betty?'

'Yes.'

'Well, it is rather a stupid wood, for we came to nothing particular; only we've found a little house. It has three sides and a roof--tumbling in. We're going to mend it up, and live there, next time we come out here. At least, I mean to live in it. I shall be a disguised prince hiding for my life, and you will all have to search the wood to get food for me. Molly and I have made it all up. She is to be my daughter, who steals out at night time to visit me; you can be a servant, who mends the roof, and makes me comfortable; and the twins can be soldiers scouring the wood for me.'

Neither Betty nor Molly showed much interest in this plan; they were both thinking of the twins, and Douglas, having said his say, was quite ready to start off on the quest.

Together they ran along the path by which the little boys had gone. It led them under some low brushwood, and then along the banks of a stream.

And then calling their names aloud, they were relieved to hear an answering call. A moment later and they came upon them. The stream was broad, and rather deep here, with great boulders of stone appearing above the water. Upon one of these boulders, in the centre of the stream, sat the two little boys, wet to the skin, and looking the pictures of abject despair.

'However did you get there?' said Douglas rather angrily.

'Billy was getting some forget-me-nots, and tumbled in, and so I came over to help him, and we can't get back,' explained Bobby, not very lucidly.

'If you got over there you can get back again,' Molly said decisively.

At this both the twins began to cry.

'It's so cold; we was nearly drownded; and we've seen a shark swim along.'

Douglas laughed, but took off his shoes and stockings.

'I shall have to wade in and bring them over on my back,' he said, with rather a lordly air.

And this he did, landing both the twins safely on the bank.

'Nurse will scold awfully, they're both so wet; we shall have to go home at once,' said prudent Molly, as with very small handkerchiefs she and Betty tried to wipe some of the wet off their clothes.

'And then she'll say we're never to come to the wood again. I wish we hadn't brought them with us!'

It was a quiet little party that returned to Brook Farm; and in the excitement of receiving the vials of nurse's wrath, and the fuss made over the poor little victims, Betty's adventures remained still unheard and unknown.

She was not sorry that this was so, and was quite content to muse in the secrecy of her own heart upon the beautiful cold lady who had given her the lilies. She thought of her sleeping and waking, and with a strange longing wondered if she would ever be allowed to see her again.

The next afternoon was a very warm one; but Betty's restless little feet could not stay in the b.u.t.tercup meadow close to the house, where the others were playing, and soon a small white figure in a large sun-bonnet could have been seen plodding along the dusty road towards the churchyard in the distance.

Her little determined face relaxed into wonderful softness when she entered the cool church. Going on tip-toe up the aisle, she came to the monument of little Violet Russell, and here she paused, then clambering up with a little difficulty, she laid two fresh lilies by the side of the sculptured one, across the clasped hands of the child's figure.

'There,' she said in a hushed voice; 'you shan't always hold a cold dead lily, Violet dear; I've brought them to you from my own self, because they're mine, and I'll get you some other flowers when they are dead.'

She put her soft red lips down and left a kiss on the little clasped hands, and then slipped down to the ground again, where she stood for a moment looking up at the stained window above. A noise startled her: walking up the middle aisle was the lady who had played to her before, and following her a rough country boy, who disappeared through a little door behind the organ.

Betty slipped behind a pillar, and watched eagerly. Yes, she was going to play again; and her heart beat high with expectation. She crept into one of the high, old-fashioned pews, and sitting on a ha.s.sock, leant her little head back upon the seat, and prepared herself to listen.

The music began, and sent a little shiver of delight through Betty's soul. The long, soft notes that died away like a summer breeze, the deep, grand rolls that seemed to come from a cavern below, and then blend with the clear, sweet echoes rising and falling, and at length ascending in a burst of praise and gladness--it seemed to her that the angels above would be stooping to listen to such strains.

And then, after a little, the lady began to sing; and Betty drew in one deep breath after another. It must be an angel, surely! and yet there was something in the fresh holland dress and shady hat of the singer this afternoon that seemed hardly suitable for an angel's apparel.

The lady once looked round; and Betty thought her face looked sad; but when she began to sing her face was illumined with such light and gladness that the child watched it entranced.