"Why, you've become quite a traveller, missie," said Mr. Simmons jokingly; "supposing we had let you sleep on! where would you have been by this time, I wonder?"
"I don't know," answered Jessie, looking quite alarmed.
"I hope you've got your purse safe, missie," said the porter, as he passed her.
"Yes, thank you," answered Jessie gravely, putting her hand down and feeling it in her pocket.
"Good-night!" they all said to each other as they parted, which Jessie thought was very polite and friendly of them. Then she and her granny stepped out into the road, and walked quickly through the fast-deepening twilight to the little cottage where the light was already glowing a welcome to them from the kitchen window, and grandfather was waiting supper for them.
CHAPTER IV.
A GARDEN SUNDAY-SCHOOL.
Springbrook village lay near Springbrook station. It was a very small village, but those who lived in it thought it a very pretty one. It consisted of the church, the vicarage, the doctor's house, three or four small private houses and a number of picturesque cottages.
The church stood at one end of the village in the middle of a beautiful churchyard and burying-ground, surrounded by fine trees— flowering chestnuts and sweet-scented limes, while every here and there blossomed beautiful red May-trees, lilacs, laburnums, syringas and roses. From this, the one street—lined on either side by little cottages, with here and there a small shop—led to the green, around which stood in irregular fashion pretty houses and large cottages with gardens before their doors. The doctor lived in one of these houses, and the curate, Mr. Harburton, in another, and Miss Barley and Miss Grace Barley in a third, and all the houses looked out on the green and the road and across at each other, but all those who dwelt in them were so neighbourly and friendly, this did not matter at all.
Jessie thought the houses by the green were perfectly lovely, they had creepers and roses growing over them, and window-boxes full of flowers. She thought the green was lovely too, and almost wished that she lived by it that she might be able to see the donkeys and the ducks which were usually standing about cropping the grass, or poking about in the little stream which ran along one side of the green. She thought the ivy-covered church, with the trees and the hawthorns all about it, one of the most beautiful sights in the world, and nothing she loved better than to walk with granp along the sweet-scented roads along by the green and through the village street to church.