bout the church being
always full of children now. But I didn't listen to him much; I was
busy looking at the little girl, and thinking, and then I made up a
beautiful story on the spot; it's something like some of the fairy
stories we read in our big books. I'll tell it to you in a minute. I
said to him that I thought I could tell him where the roses came from,
and he said "Where?" and then I said to him that the little girl was a
sleeping beauty waiting for a prince to come along and kiss her and
wake her up; but he hadn't come yet, so a fairy was watching her till
he came; and every moonlight night she would bring some flowers in, and
creep inside them and sleep with her, to keep all the goblins off, and
she would sing her songs in the night, and tell her stories, and
comfort her----'

'But,' interrupted Molly, 'if she was asleep, how could she hear the
fairy?'

'You're too sharp! Perhaps you'll wait. I was just going to say that
in the night she was able to open her eyes, only she couldn't get up.
I had just got as far as that, when the gentleman said "Pshaw!" and
then he told me to run off, and not come into the church again to
tomfool--that's what he said. He was a kind of dark, grim-looking
ogre, and I'll--well, I shall have more to do with him yet!'

This awful threat was accompanied with a very significant shake of the
flaxen head, but Betty cried out hotly,--

'You don't know anything about it! He's the father of that little
girl, and he goes to her grave to say his prayers and cry. I know more
about him than you do, so there!'

'What do you know?'

But Betty walked off, hugging Prince under her arm, and calling out as
she went, with a spice of superiority in her tone, 'Prince and I know
all about him, and her, and the roses; that's _our_ secret.'

CHAPTER VII

Haymaking

It was only a few days after this that nurse took all the children to
tea at an old farmhouse about two miles off. They rode part of the way
in a farm waggon, and were all in the best of spirits, for it was
haymaking time,--a time of entrancing joy to all children, and to the
little Stuarts a new and delightful experience. They had tea out in
one of the fields under a shady elm, and were just separating after it
was over to have one more romp in the hay, when, to Betty's intense
surprise, who should come across the field but Nesta Fairfax! She
evidently knew Mrs. Crump, the farmer's wife, well, for she sat down
a