"Thank you, aunty!" said Audrey, her face filling with sunshine in a moment, as she climbed on a chair, crept through the small square casement, and jumped to the ground outside.
The little boy gave a cry of joy as he saw her, and came slowly forward to meet her. He could not come quickly, for Stephen was a crippled child, and had never known what it was to run or to jump like other children.
When he was a baby, he was so small that he was quite a curiosity; and the neighbours declared that such a child had never been seen before. But his father had nursed him and watched him as a gardener tends and watches a little sickly plant of which he is very fond. And Stephen had learnt to walk when he was three years old, and could now creep about the churchyard and play quietly with Audrey amongst the old graves. He was his father's only treasure, for Stephen's mother had died when he was a baby; and he loved the little lad with all the love of his heart.
Stephen's father was a cobbler, and his window also opened on the churchyard; and there he sat mending his shoes, and now and then glancing at the children at their play. He was never happy when Stephen was out of his sight, for the child's back was deformed and crooked, and his legs were weak and unsound, and his father always feared some evil might befall him.
And this was Stephen's birthday, and he was five years old.
"Oh, Audrey, I'm glad you've come!" he cried. "I've waited and waited till school should leave, and it did seem so long! I've been looking in at the window of the church and, Audrey, do you know, there's a bird building his nest inside, just over the pulpit. Come and look!"
The two children went round to the other side of the church, and climbing on the top of a large flat tombstone they peered in through the yellow and discoloured panes of the window. What a strange place it was!
The high, rotten old pulpit looked as if it must soon fall; the narrow brown pews, with their high backs, and the large square pews, where the grand people once sat, were all alike gradually slipping into crooked positions, and leaning over on the uneven stone floor.
Audrey and Stephen loved to look into that old church; they peeped in at all times of the day—in the morning, when the church looked bright and almost cheerful, as the sunbeams danced on the old pillars and streamed down the deserted aisles; in the afternoon, when the long shadows fell across the chancel, and the coloured window at the western end threw blue and red lights on the font and on the mouldy pavement below; and again in the evening, just before going to bed, when the old church was weird and ghostly, and the stone figures on the tombs in the chancel looked to the children as if they were alive, and might stand up and call to them as they watched.
Stephen would tremble at such times and cling fast to Audrey; but she was never afraid of the old church by night or by day, and she would have slept as soundly and as happily in one of the square pews as she did in her own bed at home.