such a prejudice
against Mitchell's employment that really no intercourse had taken
place between the two families. Mrs. Rowles had been drawn, she knew
not how, but by some sort of instinct, to visit her brother-in-law
this day; and she had further been impelled to offer Juliet a trip to
the country. But now she almost regretted it.

Juliet sat opposite her aunt, looking out blankly at the houses as the
train passed through the western suburbs. After a while she stood up
at the window. Fields and trees were beginning to be more frequent
than at first. Soon the houses became rare, and the fields continuous.

Juliet's lips were muttering something which Mrs. Rowles could not
hear in the noise made by the train.

She leaned forward to the child. "What do you say?"

"Pretty churchyard!" said Juliet.

"_What_ do you say?"

"Pretty churchyard' pretty churchyard!"

"Whatever do you mean, my child!"

"I mean, this churchyard is bigger and prettier than the churchyards
in London, where I used to play when I was little."

Mrs. Rowles's eyes filled with tears. She understood now that Juliet
had only known trees and flowers by seeing them in the churchyards of
London, disused for the dead, and turned into gardens--grim
enough--for the living. And so to the child's mind green grass and
waving boughs seemed to be always disused churchyards. Such sad
ignorance would seem impossible, if we did not know it to be a _fact_.

"But, Juliet, these are fields. Grass grows in them for the cows and
sheep to eat, and corn to make us bread, and flowers to make us happy
and to make us good."

Juliet did not reply. She gazed out at the landscape through which
they were passing, and which was growing every moment more soft and
lovely as the sky grew mellower and the shadows longer. She almost
doubted her aunt's words. And yet this would be a very big churchyard;
and certainly there were cows and sheep in sight, and there were red
and white and yellow flowers growing beside the line. So she said
nothing, but thought that she would wait and find out things for
herself.

At Littlebourne station Mrs. Rowles and Juliet alighted. The
ticket-collector looked hard at Juliet, and the cabman outside the
gate said, "Got a little un boarded out, Mrs. Rowles?"

Mrs. Rowles shook her head and walked on. She bethought herself of a
means by which to avoid most of her neighbours' eyes. She would go
round the field way, and not through the village.