The morning passed as usual. Mary did her best to give her attention to her lessons, which as a rule she found no difficulty in doing, for her godmother’s pleasant teaching was so interesting and often indeed so amusing that it did not seem like lessons at all. But this morning her head was running so much on what her Cooies had said and promised, that more than once Miss Verity had to ask her what she was thinking about.
“Is it your afternoon in the forest that you are dreaming of?” said her godmother. “Are you intending to explore it and make wonderful discoveries?”
Mary grew rather pink.
“Godmother,” she replied, “you have such a way of guessing what I am thinking about! I never knew any one like you for that.”
Miss Verity smiled.
“You need not mind,” she said. “I have not forgotten about my own dreams and fancies when I was a little girl like you. Perhaps they were not altogether dreams and fancies, after all. However that may have been, they did me no harm, and I don’t think yours will do you any harm either.”
“Were some of them about the forest?” asked Mary, rather shyly.
Miss Verity nodded.
“Yes,” she replied, “I think they nearly all had to do with the forest. You know—or perhaps you don’t know—that this was my own old home, long, long ago, when I was a very little girl. Then, when I was nearly grown-up, we left it, and I did not see it again for many years. But it always seemed ‘home’ to me, and you can imagine my delight when I heard it was again to be sold and I was able to buy it for my very own. And I hope to end my days here, at the edge of the dear forest I love so well.”
Mary listened with great interest. She thought to herself that she would soon get to feel just as her godmother did about Dove’s Nest.