"But how do you know?" she asked. "You're only children; and that was more than fifty years ago."
Cuthbert felt in his pocket and pulled out the penny.
"This is the penny," he said, "that the girl gave him. We've just found it, quite by accident. And he didn't tell her all of his thoughts. He only told her some of them. The rest are in here, and we made them come out."
He began to polish it again with his handkerchief; and then he gave it to her, and they stood watching her. For about five minutes she sat quite still; and then she looked up, and her voice had changed a little.
"If I tell you a story," she said, "will you let me keep it?"
Cuthbert looked at Doris, and Doris nodded her head.
"Why, of course," said Cuthbert. "We should be very pleased."
So while they were having tea she told them that long ago a girl had lived in that house, and that she fell in love with a young man, who was a carpenter by trade. But he was also a naturalist, and especially fond of birds, and he wanted to discover all sorts of things about them; and one day he told the girl that he was just going away to work on a railway in South America. Then he hesitated, as if he wanted to tell her something else, and she gave him a penny for his thoughts; and then he left the house, and was drowned at sea, and the girl never knew whether he had loved her or not.
"It was very silly of him," said Miss Hubbard, "not to have told her. But perhaps the girl was sillier still. For she was so sad that she wasted her whole life; and now it seems that he loved her after all."
Then she went to the window and pulled up the blind. The storm had died down, and it had stopped snowing. Brighter than eyes at a Christmas party, the stars in their thousands shone in the sky. Cuthbert and Doris said that they must be going; and old Miss Hubbard took them to the front door.