“I should like it very much indeed,” said Miss Verity. “I have a dear little book of the old fables—La Fontaine’s—oh, by the bye, it is up in your room. And I know how fond you are of animals, so—”
“Oh,” exclaimed Mary, and she looked so bright and eager that Miss Verity did not mind her interrupting. “I know what you mean. I have learnt one or two. I’ll run upstairs now and find the book, and may I choose a fable?”
“Certainly, dear,” said her godmother.
So Mary hastened to her turret, where she soon discovered the fat little old-fashioned volume. Then she chose one fable—not a very long one, but I am afraid I don’t remember which it was—and settled herself in the corner of the drawing-room, which, like her own window, looked out towards the forest, to learn two or three verses by heart.
From time to time she glanced out—with a half idea that perhaps she might catch sight of the wood-pigeons.
“They are so clever,” she said to herself, “that if they saw me learning my lessons they would quite understand I mustn’t be interrupted. But it would be nice just to feel that they were peeping at me through the branches.”
She neither heard nor saw anything of them that morning, however. But she now trusted them too much to have any fear of their forgetting her.
And by the time Miss Verity came in from her house-keeping duties, Mary’s two or three verses were perfectly learnt.
“But I will not hear them just yet,” said her godmother, “put on your hat and jacket, and come out with me to see how the ponies are this morning.”
The ponies seemed to Mary even more lovable in the stable than in harness. They both seemed to know their mistress so well, and rubbed their heads against her in the most affectionate way. And when she said to Magpie that she must make friends with Mary too, Magpie really turned her head round and gazed at Mary with her big brown eyes as if she quite understood.