"Hurry!" cried Tom, panting as he rushed across the lawn; and they reached the gate just as a stout, elderly woman and a pale-faced little girl, dressed in a quaintly-frilled black frock, paused for one moment before it.
The child gazed solemnly at the group of rosy-faced, happy-looking children on the other side of the gate; then she said something in a strange language to the nurse, and they moved on slowly.
"What a queer little girl!" said Ruth, as soon as the woman and the child were out of hearing. "Hadn't she a comical little skirt?—all tiny frills; and her hair looked so funny in those tight little pig-tails."
"I think she must be French," said Mary. "Little French girls always do their hair like that, in pictures—in two plaits tied with big bows. And the nurse was dressed like a French bonne, with those long streamers in her cap."
"She looks so sad," said Norah. "Poor little girl! Did you see how sad her eyes were when she looked at us, Mary? I don't expect she has anyone to play with her all day long."
"And the nurse looked a grim old thing," said Stephen. "You'd better offer to go and play with her, Norah; you are always wanting a friend of your own age to play with, and here's one all ready and waiting."
"She doesn't look as if she could play," said Philip. "Come on, Tom, I want to let the rabbits out for a run after I've given these mulberry leaves to the silk-worms."
The children had planned to have tea in Weedon Woods that afternoon, but before dinner-time the sky became so cloudy and angry-looking that their mother feared a storm, and said that it would be wiser to put off their picnic until another day.
And at one o'clock the rain began—down it came in torrents, then hail, then rain again; and the children stood at the windows and watched it, feeling glad that they had not started for the picnic.
"We shouldn't have liked the wood today," said Dan, pressing up rather closely to Mary as a loud rumble of thunder sounded very near to them.