Dot now seemed satisfied; and, on her side, told the old man that she had come to live in one of the small cottages near the cemetery gates, and that they used to be "ever so far off" in the country.
Then she ran away to another part of the cemetery, and old Solomon shaded his eyes with his hand to watch her out of sight.
[CHAPTER II]
DOT'S DAISIES
DOT'S mother had lived all her life in a remote part of Yorkshire, far away from church or chapel or any kind of school. But her husband had been born and brought up in a town, and country life did not suit him. And so, when Dot was about five years old, he returned to his native place, and took one of the cottages close to the cemetery, in order that his little girl might still have some green grass on which to run about, and might still see a few spring flowers.
The cemetery was some way out of the town; and Dot's mother, having had but little education herself, did not think it at all necessary that Dot, at her tender age, should go to school, and therefore the little girl was allowed to spend most of her time in the cemetery, with which she was very well pleased. She liked to run round the gravestones, and climb over the grassy mounds, and watch the robins hopping from tree to tree.
But Dot's favourite place was by old Solomon's side. She went about with him from one part of the cemetery to another, and he liked to feel her tiny hand in his. She took a great interest, too, in the graves he was digging. She watched him shaping them neatly and making them tidy, as he called it, until she began, as she fancied, to understand grave-digging nearly as well as he did. But she sometimes puzzled the old man by her questions, for Dot always wanted to know everything about what she saw.
"Mr. Solemn," she said one day, "shall you make me a little grave when I die?"
"Yes," he said, "I suppose I shall, little woman."
Dot thought this over for a long time.