CHAPTER VIII
God's Patchwork
'Good-morning to you, little maid.'
Betty and Prince had been straying through the lanes, and had suddenly come upon the old sexton, who was leaning over his cottage gate smoking a short clay pipe.
Betty's face dimpled with smiles.
'May I come in and see your little house?' she asked. 'Prince and I want something to do. Douglas and Molly are lying in a hammock, and making up stories; and the twins are no company.'
'Come in, come in, my dear, and welcome, but 'tis a lonesome kind o' home with only me in it; 'twas very different once on a time.'
He led the way up a narrow path through rows of cabbages and sweet peas, and ushered her into a tiny kitchen, clean, but rather untidy. Betty looked round with a child's admiring eyes. There were great shells on the mantelpiece, a stuffed owl on a sideboard, and lots of other quaint curiosities on some shelves in a recess.
Then she climbed into a big rocking-chair.