"Marigold Holcroft," she answered.
"Marigold! Why, that's the name of a flower! What made them call you that, I wonder? Marigold!" he repeated reflectively.
"It's quite a common flower, I know," she said, "but my mother loves it, because in the garden of her old home marigolds used to spring up year after year, and her father used to like them."
"Ah! you've got a good mother, I take it, little missy!"
"Yes, a very good mother," the little girl responded, and this time as she mentioned the dear name a smile crossed her face and drove away the tears. Her new friend looked at her approvingly, his jovial face radiant with good humour.
"I've got an old mother at home," he told her, "nigh upon eighty years of age she is, and hale and hearty still! She's a wonderful woman!"
Marigold looked interested, for to her young eyes the farmer, who was not more than forty-five, seemed quite old, and she was surprised to hear he had a mother living. She wondered if he had a wife and children too.
"I'm a bachelor," he continued, as though in answer to her thought, "and my mother keeps house for me. There's not a cleverer housewife in the county than she is! If you stay in Exeter long, I may run across you one of these days. Mother and I always drive into the city on Fridays—market-days, you know—and in the afternoon we give ourselves a treat. We go to the cathedral to hear the anthem."
"I am to live with my aunts," Marigold explained, "and their house is in Powderham Crescent. Perhaps you know that part?"
He nodded an assent. Marigold, who had by this time got over her first shyness, felt her spirits rising. At Didcot, Farmer Jo bought a packet of Banbury cakes, and gave it to her. The little girl, who had hardly tasted her breakfast, and was beginning to get hungry, thought she had never eaten anything so nice in her life before.