ng all the
nursery rhymes that would come into her head, walking as fast as she
could without making her pace felt, though the little maid--albeit small
and thin for five years old--was a heavy weight to carry for some
distance over a rough stubble field for unaccustomed arms. Tirzah had
the baby, who happily was too young to be even disturbed in his noontide
sleep, and Rachel Mole had tarried with the other maids, unable to
resist her curiosity to see what was doing at the farm since they were
out of reach.

The fugitives reached a stile which gave entrance to a rough pathway,
through a copse, and it was only here, when her mother sat down on the
trunk of a tree taking breath with a sense of safety, that little Mary
began to cry and sob. "Oh, we are lost in the wood! Please, please,
mamma, get out of it. Let us go home."

"No indeed, Mary, we aren't lost! See, here's the path. We are going
to see Mrs Pearson's pussy cat and her turkey."

"I don't want to. Oh! the wolves will come and eat us up," and she
clung round her mother in real terror.

"Wolves! No, indeed! There are no wolves in England, darling, here or
anywhere."

"Rachel said the wolves would come if I went in here."

"Then Rachel was very silly. No, there are no wolves. No, Mary, only--
see! the little rabbit. Come along, take hold of my hand, we will soon
get out. Never mind; God is taking care of us. Come, we will say our
hymn as we go on."

The mother said her verse, and Mary tried to follow, in a voice
quivering with sobs. Those imaginary wolves were a far greater alarm
and trouble to her than the real riot at her father's farm. She clung
round her mother's gown, and there was no pacifying her but by taking
her up in arms.

"Let me take her, ma'am," said Tirzah Todd, making over the sleeping
Edmund to his mother. "Come, little lady, I'll carry you so nice."

"No, no! Go away, ugly woman," cried Mary ungratefully, flapping at her
with her hands in terror at the brown face and big black eyes.

"Oh, naughty, naughty Mary," sighed the mother, "when Tirzah is so good,
and wants to help you! Don't be a naughty child!"

But the word naughty provoked such a fit of crying that there was
nothing for it but for Mrs Carbonel to pick the child up and struggle
on as best she could, soothing her terror at the narrow paths and the
unknown way, and the mysterious alarm of the woodlands, as well,
perhaps, as the undefined sense of other pe