“I like it,” she said.
“Well, I don’t,” Kitty declared. “Do hurry, Elizabeth, we’re a long way from home.”
A little further up the lane, they met an old woman sitting on a broken-down bar of fencing, her arms full of golden-rod. To Kitty’s dismay, Blue Bonnet stopped again. “You like flowers, don’t you?” she said.
Across her sheaf of yellow blossoms the old woman smiled up at her. “Yes, deary, and these—they’re most as good as sunshine in a room.”
Whereupon Blue Bonnet, attracted by something in the old woman’s manner, sat down beside her. “Do you live around here?” she asked.
The wrinkled face inside the big calico sunbonnet quivered. “Me? I live back yonder,” the woman said, with a little nod in the direction of the poorhouse. “Where do you live?” she added hastily.
“Oh, I’m staying in Woodford,” Blue Bonnet answered.
“No, you’re not,” Kitty murmured impatiently; “you’re staying anywhere and everywhere out of it—that you can.”
“I ain’t been in to Woodford for quite a spell now,” the old woman said. “’Tain’t much use going to a place, where there ain’t anyone there going to be glad to see you.”
“Where are your folks?” Blue Bonnet asked sympathetically.