‘What is he, then?’ asked the Rector. ‘Some relation?’
‘No,’ was the immediate reply. ‘I call him uncle, but he isn’t a real uncle, nor Uncle Luke neither. I’m a foundling—Aunt Jane found me, out there!’
And with a back sweep of her hand, the little girl indicated the great marshes, steaming and reddening in the setting sun.
‘And whoever you are, are you not aware,’ said the Rector, improving the occasion, ‘that you are a very wicked little girl? Upon this holy day of all days in the year I find you practising a vicious pastime here, in God’s own acre! On a tombstone! Little girl, do you know that there is a dead fellow-creature lying under you, and that you are profaning his place of rest?’
The girl gave a start and a scared look downward, as if half expecting the dead man to arise and confront her; then half unconsciously she edged off the tombstone and stood ankle deep in the long churchyard grass.
‘I am afraid,’ said the Rector, shaking his forefinger at her. ‘I am really very much afraid that you have been very badly brought up. Tell me, have you ever heard the word of God? Do you ever go to church?’
The answer was at any rate prompt and explicit.
‘No—never.’
‘Ah, I thought so. A sad case. And your father—I mean your adopted father—is he not ashamed of himself to bring you up in ignorance and sin?’
This was touching rather a dangerous chord. The little girl flushed, panted, opened her large blue eyes full on the minister and exclaimed—