IT was a lovely day, out in the fair country, far away from the smoke and dust, the noise and turmoil, which had surrounded Ailie from earliest babyhood. Through the drive from the station, Ailie sat beside her mother in the farmer's cart which had been sent to meet them, wondering till words failed her at all she saw.
The green early grass stretching into the far distance, the purple horizon tints, the budding richness of hedges near at hand, the glee of birds overhead, the lowing of cows in the meadows, the gay frisking of tiny lambs beside their staid old mothers, the harsh cawing of rooks in old elm trees—what a marvellous world it was!
Ailie's pent-up delight broke forth in one eager cry: "O mother! Just think o' livin' here!"
"Seems a dream to me, to be seeing a green field again, it do," said Mary Carter.
"O mother, don't it look as if there was room here?" said Ailie. "An' not every one a-crowdin' an' pushin' everybody! Why, it looks most as if the world was gettin' empty."
"Ah, you be come from London parts," said the stout driver in his smock frock, who had been whistling a nameless tune, and letting his plump horse jog along quietly at any pace it chose. "Lots o' folks in London, ain't there, an' not much o' green fields?"
"I never see a green field in all my life afore," said Ailie, upon which the worthy man ejaculated—
"Think o' that now! Never see a green field!" and gazed at Ailie with compassion.
"O mother,—see, there be a brown field too!" cried Ailie. "What's it for?"
"That be sown with wheat," said the man. "Ye'll see it all a-comin' up by an' by. An' there, over among the trees, is the house I'm a-takin' ye to—Mrs. Therlock's."