e
watering-cans too, and fancy handkerchiefs with a nursery rhyme round the
border, and funny little books, with roughly done pictures in the
brightest of colours, and money-boxes, some like little houses, others
representing miniature letter-boxes.

Angela longed and longed for a pitcher. Poppy wanted a penny
watering-can, painted bright red inside, and green out. Penelope wanted a
book and some sweets, and Esther a money-box, that she might begin to save
at once.

"_Do_ let's go inside," whispered Penelope. "There may be lots of other
things inside."

"But wouldn't it look rude to come out of one shop and go right into
another?" asked Esther, who was really as interested as Penelope.

"Can't we walk on a little way, and then on our way back go in as though
we had just seen something we wanted?" suggested Angela, who was an adept
at trying to spare people's feelings. "P'r'aps Mrs. Bennett won't be in
her shop by that time."

They all agreed to this, and sauntered on with a simulated air of
unconcern. They walked on past all the cottages, keeping to the wide
granite road which led with many windings up and up a hill beyond the
village. How far they went they had no idea, but by and by they heard a
clock strike in the distance.

"I do believe we have come to a town, or something," said Penelope
excitedly. "There isn't a church or a big clock in Dorsham, only a
chapel. Let's go on and see."

But Esther checked her enthusiasm. "We had better not stay away too long,
or Cousin Charlotte may be frightened, and we want to stop at Mrs.
Vercoe's before we go home. Let's go there now, shall we?"

The suggestion was seconded with alacrity. But if they thought that their
little manoeuvrings were going to blind Mrs. Bennett, or spare her
feelings, they made a mistake. They had yet to learn that no single thing
happened in Dorsham 'street,' no single person went up it or down, without
the fact being known sooner or later--generally on the instant--to every
dweller therein; and for four strangers, newly come to live in the place,
to expect to escape notice was absurd.

The only result of their plan was to attract more attention to themselves;
but of this they were happily unconscious, and once inside the little,
low, dim, crowded place, their joy seemed unbounded. If Mrs. Bennett had
repelled them, plump, jolly-looking Mrs. Vercoe, with her round rosy face
and kindly, smiling eyes, attracted them at once.

"W