see it put up. Now we must
find out Mr. Fairchild's. Can't you ask somebody, Rough?'

Randolph, though he would not have confessed it, was a little shy of
accosting any of the few passers-by. Just because there were so few and
the place was so quiet, the children felt themselves rather
uncomfortably conspicuous, and they could not help noticing that here
and there the inhabitants came rather unnecessarily to their doors to
look at them as they passed. It was not done rudely, and indeed it was
only natural that the arrival of a new rector and his family at Seacove
should attract a good deal of attention, considering that old Dr. Bunton
and his wife had been fixtures there for more years than Mr. Vane
himself had been in the world.

'Oh yes,' said Rough in an off-hand way, 'I can ask any one. But we
may as well walk on a little and look about us. If it is a shop we'll
see the name.'

Just then there came out of a shop in front of them--a baker's, I think
it was--a small figure which walked on slowly some paces before them.

'That's the little girl of the dolls' chairs,' exclaimed Bridget. 'Shall
I run on and ask her? I don't mind.'

'You never do,' said Alie, and indeed Biddy was most comfortably
untroubled with shyness.

'Yes, run on and see if she knows where it is.'

Off trotted Biddy, her precious purchases tightly clasped in her hands.

'Little girl,' she called, when she got close to the other child.

[Illustration: 'Little girl,' she called, when she got close to the
other child. P. 75.]

The little girl turned, and looked at Biddy full in the face with her
grave earnest eyes without speaking. And for half a moment Bridget did
feel something approaching to shyness, but it gave her a comfortable
fellow-feeling to see that the small stranger was also still carrying
the little chairs she had bought. They were not done up in paper like
Biddy's--she had not waited for that,--but she had covered them loosely
with a very clean, very diminutive pocket-handkerchief, and Bridget saw
quite well what they were.

'Please,' Biddy went on, slightly breathless--it did not take much to
put Biddy out of breath--'please can you tell us where Mr. Fairchild's
is in this street? Rough's got a letter for him, but we don't know if
it's a shop or only a house.'

'Mr. Fairchild's,' repeated the little girl, 'he's my father; it's our
shop. I'll show it you,' and a faint pink flush of excitement came into
her pale face. These