“Thank you, miss. 'Ow would 'The 'Edge' do, miss?”
“But we have no hedge.” (She shall not have anything with an h in it, if I can help it.)
“No, miss, but I thought I might set out a bit, if worst come to worst.”
“And wait three or four years before people would know why the cottage was named? Oh no, Mrs. Bobby.”
“Thank you, miss.”
“We might have something quite out of the common, like 'Providence Cottage,' down the bank. I don't know why Mrs. Jones calls it Providence Cottage, unless she thinks it's a providence that she has one at all; or because, as it's just on the edge of the hill, she thinks it's a providence that it hasn't blown off. How would you like 'Peace' or 'Rest' Cottage?”
“Begging your pardon, miss, it's neither peace nor rest I gets in it these days, with a twenty-five pound debt 'anging over me, and three children to feed and clothe.”
“I fear we are not very clever, Mrs. Bobby, or we should hit upon the right thing with less trouble. I know what I will do: I will go down in the road and look at the place for a long time from the outside, and try to think what it suggests to me.”
“Thank you, miss; and I'm sure I'm grateful for all the trouble you are taking with my small affairs.”
Down I went, and leaned over the wicket-gate, gazing at the unnamed cottage. The brick pathway was scrubbed as clean as a penny, and the stone step and the floor of the little kitchen as well. The garden was a maze of fragrant bloom, with never a weed in sight. The fowl cackled cheerily still, adding insult to injury, the pet sheep munched grass contentedly, and the canaries sang in their cages under the vines. Mrs. Bobby settled herself on the porch with a pan of peas in her neat gingham lap, and all at once I cried:—