“What?” said Clif.
“‘Brownses’ House’ is empty again,” said the little boy; “p’raps some one nice will come.”
“Brownses’ House” was a rather pretty cottage with a garden, the back fence of which adjoined their own. It possessed the distinction of being one of the three—their own and the clergyman’s being the other two—houses that formed the aristocracy of Sunnymeade. The rest of the population consisted of miners, and tradespeople who had come to supply their wants.
Clif’s brow lightened a little.
“Let’s go and look,” he said, and they went and stood for half-an-hour gazing at the shut-up cottage.
It was the one place in Sunnymeade that had any “possibility” about it; everything else in the dreary village being plain, common fact.
The miners and their families lived in the monotonous ugly cottages dotted up and down the streets. Sometimes new ones came, sometimes old ones went away. It was all one to the little Wises; the children of the men were more than usually uncouth and rough, [71] ]and Mrs. Wise would not allow her boys to go among them.
The clergyman had been a fixture here for untold years; he had a married daughter keeping house for him, and two grand-children, a stolid boy of seven, and an equally stolid girl of nine.
But at “Brownses’ House” people came and went as often as once a year, and there was always just the possibility that some one with a companionable family might some day come. One time Clif’s spirits had been raised to the highest pitch of excitement and happiness by the sight of a boy of about thirteen looking over the dividing fence. He had never had a suitable companion of his own age, and his heart almost stood still with its shock of happiness. They made friends at once, and for a month life was ideal to Clif; they rode their rough ponies together, they got up a cricket club, they climbed trees, they swam and read and talked together.
But the boy’s father had come to see if “Moondi-Moondi” would be a suitable place in which to start a law practice, and in less than a month he had shaken the dust of it off his feet, and “Brownses’” was empty again.