"Then you like your own home better than this big house?"
"No I don't. I should be very silly if I did. Home is a funny little house, in a funny little sloping garden on the side of a hill. Uncle Tom says it is very healthy. There is a tiny salon, and a tiny dining-room, and a dear little kitchen where the bonne a tout faire lives, and four tiny bedrooms. It was a. fisherman's cottage once, and then an English lady--an old lady--bought it, and made new rooms, and had it all made pretty, and then she died; and then Uncle Tom happened to see it, and took it for mother."
"And was my little Moppet born there?"
"No; I was born a long, long way off--up in the hills."
"What hills?"
"The northwest provinces. It's an awful long way off--but I can't tell you anything about it," added Moppet, with a solemn shake of her cropped head, "for I was born before I can remember. Laddie says we all came over the sea--but we mustn't talk to mother about that time, and Laddie's very stupid--he may have told me all wrong."
"And doesn't Lassie remember coming home in the ship?"
"She remembers a gentleman who gave her goodies."
"But not the ship?"
"No, not the ship; but she thinks there must have been a ship, for the wind blew very hard, and the gentleman went up and down as if he was in a swing. Laddie pretends to remember all the sailors' names, but I don't think he really can."