"Why, my dear, much the same as other folk, I should say. They have their rooms to clean, and their dinner to cook, and their children to look after. Still I daresay it'd be a bit drearier in the country of a right-down wet day like this, even than in town. I've never lived there myself, except for a week at a time at most, but mother was all her young days in the country."
"Everybody's fathers and mothers lived there," said Peggy, rather petulantly. "Why don't peoples let their children live there now?"
Miss Earnshaw laughed a little. Peggy did not like her to laugh in that way, and she gave herself a little wriggle, though poor Miss Earnshaw certainly did not mean to vex her.
"There are plenty of children in the country too, Miss Peggy," she said. "Mother's youngest sister has twelve."
"Twelve," repeated Peggy, "how nice! at least if there's lots of sisters among them, and no very little babies. Do they live over in that country?" she went on, pointing in the direction of the invisible hills, "that country called Brack—— You know the name."
"Brackenshire," said Miss Earnshaw, "no, my mother comes from much farther off. A very pretty place it must be by what she says. Not but what Brackenshire's a pretty country too. I've been there several times with the Sunday school for a treat."
"And did you see the hills and the white cottages?" asked Peggy breathlessly.
"Oh yes, the hills are beautiful, and there's lots of cottages of all kinds. They look pretty among the trees, even though they're only poor little places, most of them."
"The white ones is the prettiest," said Peggy, as if she knew all about it.
"Yes, I daresay," said Miss Earnshaw, without paying much attention; she had got to rather a difficult part of the sleeve she was making.