[CHAPTER IV]
Forgotten Graves
ONE day, as the children stood by Granny Robin's side, they talked about the old graves in the churchyard. It was a bright spring evening, and the golden sunshine was streaming through the branches of the ragged, untidy trees, which nearly hid the old church from sight. Granny Robin could not see the sunshine, but Stephen could see it, and he told her about it, and said he was sure the swallows liked it as much as he did, for they were flying round and round in long circles, twittering as they flew.
It had become quite a regular thing for Stephen to tell the old woman all he saw, and he loved to hear her say that she was now no longer blind, for she had found a pair of new eyes.
One day she called him her "little Hobab," and when he laughed and asked her why she gave him such a funny name, she said it was because, long, long ago, when Moses was travelling through the wilderness with the children of Israel, he said to his brother-in-law, Hobab:
"Thou mayest be to us instead of eyes." And she said that God had sent little Stephen to her, in her old age, that he might be instead of eyes to her.
"I am so sorry for those poor graves," said Stephen on that spring evening, when he had been telling Granny Robin about the sunlight and the swallows.
"Why are you sorry for them?" asked the old woman.
"They look so sad and lonely," said Stephen.
"What are they like?" asked Granny Robin.