'"No," I said; "oughtn't they to be there? I'll take them away." And then he frowned worse than ever, and said, "Don't you dare to lay a finger on them!" and then he muttered something about the church being always full of children now. But I didn't listen to him much; I was busy looking at the little girl, and thinking, and then I made up a beautiful story on the spot; it's something like some of the fairy stories we read in our big books. I'll tell it to you in a minute. I said to him that I thought I could tell him where the roses came from, and he said "Where?" and then I said to him that the little girl was a sleeping beauty waiting for a prince to come along and kiss her and wake her up; but he hadn't come yet, so a fairy was watching her till he came; and every moonlight night she would bring some flowers in, and creep inside them and sleep with her, to keep all the goblins off, and she would sing her songs in the night, and tell her stories, and comfort her——'
'But,' interrupted Molly, 'if she was asleep, how could she hear the fairy?'
'You're too sharp! Perhaps you'll wait. I was just going to say that in the night she was able to open her eyes, only she couldn't get up. I had just got as far as that, when the gentleman said "Pshaw!" and then he told me to run off, and not come into the church again to tomfool—that's what he said. He was a kind of dark, grim-looking ogre, and I'll—well, I shall have more to do with him yet!'
This awful threat was accompanied with a very significant shake of the flaxen head, but Betty cried out hotly,—
'You don't know anything about it! He's the father of that little girl, and he goes to her grave to say his prayers and cry. I know more about him than you do, so there!'
'What do you know?'
But Betty walked off, hugging Prince under her arm, and calling out as she went, with a spice of superiority in her tone, 'Prince and I know all about him, and her, and the roses; that's our secret.'