CHAPTER I
IN THE OLD WILLOW TREE
He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small.
—Coleridge.
Ruth climbed to her favourite perch in the old willow tree, and settled Belinda in a crotch beside her.
“Now,” she said, drawing a long breath, “we will be cool and comfy.”
Certainly if there was a cool spot to be found on this hot August morning it was in the shade of this big willow.
“Her very own tree,” as Ruth always called it, for, since she could climb at all, she had loved to sit among its drooping branches and hear the leaves whispering together the wonderful things, which she knew they were telling each other, even though she could not understand them.
Then, too, she could look down into the brook, and watch the doings of the queer little people who made their home there.