'What does it all mean?' said the child. 'It is so hard to read, I can scarcely understand it.'
'Why, as to that, miss,' answered Ephraim, 'it seems to me as long as it's pious words, there beant no call to understand 'em, let alone I'm that deaf to-day, it seems naught but a buzzin' like when you read.'
Peggy closed the book hurriedly.
'I think I had better be going now,' she announced. 'I hope your headache will be well soon. Can't I put the kettle on for you?'
'Ay, miss, if you be so bountiful. My rheumatics be cruel bad when I stir me.'
Peggy filled the kettle from the pump in the back garden, and hung it on its hook over the fire. She found the old man's cup and saucer, and set out his tea on the little round table by his side, and finally took her departure, feeling she had at least attended to his temporal wants, and might leave the rest to older and wiser heads than hers.
'I'll call and see Mrs. Davis; there'll be plenty of time before tea,' she said to herself, as she came back up the village street, swinging her empty basket.
Mrs. Davis was a dear old Welshwoman, and a particular friend of Peggy's. She was one of Nature's gentlewomen, for her kind heart prompted those little gracious, courteous acts which in a higher class we call good breeding. She made quite a picture in her short linsey-woolsey petticoat, with the check apron, her plaid shawl crossed over her cotton bodice, and the frilled white cap framing the kind old face, with its apple cheeks and soft white hair. She was sitting among her bees this Sunday afternoon, beating with an iron spoon upon an old tin kettle.
'They be swarming, indeed, Miss Peggy,' she said. 'And here I've had to sit the whole of the day, beating this old tin—and Sunday, too! But we can't expect the poor creatures to understand that, can we?'
'I suppose not,' said Peggy, settling herself on a low wooden seat, at a safe distance from the agitated hives, and letting her glance wander round the little garden, where the tall yellow lilies reared their stately heads over a mass of sweet cottage flowers, pinks and forget-me-nots, poppies and double daisies, sweet-williams—loved of the bees—pansies, lupins, and snap-dragons; over the cottage, where the white roses climbed up the thatch to the very chimneys, and where through the open doorway could be seen the neat kitchen, with its red-brick floor, the settle placed by the fireside, the tall grandfather's clock ticking away in the corner, and the oak dresser, with its rows of blue willow-pattern plates; and back again at last to where Mrs. Davis sat with her grandchild by her knee, a small round-eyed boy, whose thumb was stuck perpetually, like a stopper, in his mouth, and who stood watching the bees with stolid indifference.