"I gave you this bedroom because it is next to my own," the old lady explained. "I feared you might be lonely in a strange house."
Marigold glanced around her quickly. The apartment was furnished in an old-fashioned manner, the dressing-table being draped with white muslin looped up with bows of pale blue ribbon, and the walls were covered with a paper over which trailed full-blown roses. In one corner was a large doll's house on a stand, and as Marigold's glance rested upon it in wonder, Mrs. Adams said simply—
"Perhaps you have heard that I once had two little daughters of my own? God took them from me many years ago. Well, this was their room. Look here, my dear!"
She opened a cupboard door, and revealed to sight upon a shelf a lot of children's toys, including two old-fashioned Dutch dolls with cheeks whose bloom was as vivid and whose eyes were as black and staring as they had been half a century before.
A lump rose in Marigold's throat as she looked at the dead children's treasures, and she impulsively slipped her little warm fingers into the old lady's wrinkled hand.
Mrs. Adams smiled, and hand-in-hand they went over the rest of the house. Marigold was especially delighted with the dairy, its tiled floor and shining milk pans, and was promised that on the morrow she should be taught how to turn the rich cream into butter.
Then Farmer Jo came in and claimed her attention. She accompanied him to the stables, and was introduced to Colonel, the tall black horse that was driven in the dogcart, and to Mrs. Adams' pony, Dumpling, whose sole duty in life was to take his mistress about in a little, low basket carriage. After that they went for a stroll in the meadows near by, where the cart-horses were enjoying a rest after the work of the day, and the placid cows were lying down among the daisies and buttercups, pictures of ease and contentment. Then back to the house again, where supper was awaiting their return; and afterwards Marigold went to bed "comfortably tired," as she said, and lay down in her nest of feathers, meaning to go to sleep at once. But, instead, she remained awake, thinking of Mrs. Adams and Farmer Jo, till she heard the former come upstairs and pause outside the door.
"I am not asleep, Mrs. Adams," Marigold called out.
"How is that?" asked the old lady, as she entered and bent over the little girl. "Do you not find the bed comfortable?"
"Oh, very comfortable! I never felt such a soft bed before!"