Somewhat to everybody's surprise, on the third day Hoodie condescended to ask a favour. Might she go out for a walk alone with Lucy? Everybody was so enchanted at her seeming to take interest in anything or wishing for anything, that with some conditions her request was at once granted. It was arranged that she should set off with Lucy and go wherever she wished, with the understanding that she would meet Martin and the other children at four o'clock at a certain point on the road, as it was not convenient that Lucy should stay out longer. To this Hoodie agreed.
"I'm going through the wood," she said. "I want to get some flowers that grow there, and Lucy must take a basket and a knife to dig them up, and then I'll tell her what to do."
"Very well, Miss Hoodie," said Martin, but privately she told Lucy not to let the little girl go to the cottages at the edge of the wood, for Martin had never forgotten the fright of Hoodie's escapade several months ago. "If she gets in the way of going to that young woman's cottage, she'll be for ever running off," she said. "So silly of the people to encourage her, when they might see we didn't like it. We met the young woman the other day, and she actually stopped short in the road and began asking when Miss Hoodie was coming to see her again."
"But mamma says they're very respectable people, Martin," said Maudie, who was standing by. "I don't think she would mind if Hoodie did go to see them. Papa said one day he wished the young woman's husband was one of our men. He's so steady."
"Hold your tongue, Miss Maudie," said Martin with unusual sharpness. She knew that what the child said was true, but she had taken a prejudice against the little family in Red Riding Hood's cottage, as the children always called it, and when a good conscientious woman of Martin's age and character once takes a prejudice, it is rather a hopeless matter!
Poor Maudie slid away, feeling in her turn that things were rather hard upon her. She had been very patient and gentle with her strange-tempered little sister these three days, and had tried not to feel hurt at Hoodie's indifference to all her small overtures of sympathy. And now to be told by Martin to hold her tongue when all she meant was to try to make things better, was not easy to bear.
"I'm sure Hoodie wants to get flowers to put on birdie's grave," she thought to herself, as she wiped away the tears called forth by Martin's sharp words. "I think she might have told me about it and asked me to go too."
But she said nothing about it, and set off uncomplainingly on her solitary walk with Martin, for the two little boys were spending the afternoon with the children at the Rectory.
Hoodie marched Lucy straight off to the wood. Primroses were the flowers on which her heart was set, for birdie's grave, as Maudie had guessed. She had seen them growing in the wood in the spring in great numbers and beauty, and no flower, she had settled in her mind, could look so pretty on birdie's grave. She said very little to Lucy, having satisfied herself that the knife to dig the roots up with and the basket to carry them home in had not been forgotten, she walked along in silence. But when they reached the wood and had gone some little way into it and no primroses were to be seen Hoodie looked very much disappointed.
"There were such lots," she said to herself.