"Pretty churchyard!" said Juliet.
"What do you say?"
"Pretty churchyard' pretty churchyard!"
"Whatever do you mean, my child!"
"I mean, this churchyard is bigger and prettier than the churchyards in London, where I used to play when I was little."
Mrs. Rowles's eyes filled with tears. She understood now that Juliet had only known trees and flowers by seeing them in the churchyards of London, disused for the dead, and turned into gardens—grim enough—for the living. And so to the child's mind green grass and waving boughs seemed to be always disused churchyards. Such sad ignorance would seem impossible, if we did not know it to be a fact.
"But, Juliet, these are fields. Grass grows in them for the cows and sheep to eat, and corn to make us bread, and flowers to make us happy and to make us good."
Juliet did not reply. She gazed out at the landscape through which they were passing, and which was growing every moment more soft and lovely as the sky grew mellower and the shadows longer. She almost doubted her aunt's words. And yet this would be a very big churchyard; and certainly there were cows and sheep in sight, and there were red and white and yellow flowers growing beside the line. So she said nothing, but thought that she would wait and find out things for herself.
At Littlebourne station Mrs. Rowles and Juliet alighted. The ticket-collector looked hard at Juliet, and the cabman outside the gate said, "Got a little un boarded out, Mrs. Rowles?"
Mrs. Rowles shook her head and walked on. She bethought herself of a means by which to avoid most of her neighbours' eyes. She would go round the field way, and not through the village. It was a much prettier walk, but rather longer.