"Yes, very kind of him, but I can't let you have a dog. There are many reasons against it."
Aunt Alice walked down to the gate and asked the groom to wait. He had as usual brought Faith back in the dogcart.
Faith stood hugging her basket with scarlet cheeks and excited eyes. Charity and Hope besought her to open the basket. She did so.
"Oh, I must keep him!" she cried. "I must, I must. Aunt Alice wouldn't be so cruel! He's such a darling! He licked my face and fingers with his dear little pink tongue!"
The puppy looked at the three little faces anxiously bending over him, and gave a feeble squeak of approval. Aunt Alice came hurriedly into the Cottage and sat down at her desk to write a note. The children looking at her felt the puppy's fate was sealed, and Faith burst into a flood of tears.
"It's a shame!" she sobbed. "I've been planning all the way home about him, and where he will live. There's an old tub in the yard, and I will go without some of my breakfast and dinner so as to give him some!"
"Yes, we all will," said Charity eagerly. "I'm sure Granny would let us keep him. I'll run and ask her."
But Granny was out, and Aunt Alice was quite determined. Faith actually had a tiny struggle with her aunt before the basket could be taken out of her arms; but it was no good; the puppy was delivered back to the groom with the note for Mr. Cardwell, and Aunt Alice turned to confront three very miserable and rather sullen little nieces.
"Don't be foolish, unreasonable children!" she said. "And, Faith, stop crying at once. We are not well enough off to start keeping a dog in these war times. The licence would be expensive to begin with, and we want every crumb of food ourselves. I have to keep a cat because of the mice, and I can't have another animal to feed as well. It was very kind of Mr. Cardwell, but I have explained to him that we never have kept dogs, and cannot begin it now. Granny would be quite of the same opinion as myself. It was only the other day she refused the offer of a spaniel from Sir George."
Faith rushed away out into the orchard, sobbing her heart out. There was a thick hedge at the bottom of it, and here behind as old apple tree out of sight of the house she cried most bitterly. It was a grievous disappointment to her. She could not follow her Aunt's reasons, and thought she was cross and unkind to act so.