might see we didn't like it. We met
the young woman the other day, and she actually stopped short in the
road and began asking when Miss Hoodie was coming to see her again."

"But mamma says they're very respectable people, Martin," said Maudie,
who was standing by. "I don't think she would mind if Hoodie did go to
see them. Papa said one day he wished the young woman's husband was one
of our men. He's so steady."

"Hold your tongue, Miss Maudie," said Martin with unusual sharpness. She
knew that what the child said was true, but she had taken a prejudice
against the little family in Red Riding Hood's cottage, as the children
always called it, and when a good conscientious woman of Martin's age
and character once takes a prejudice, it is rather a hopeless matter!

Poor Maudie slid away, feeling in her turn that things were rather hard
upon her. She had been very patient and gentle with her strange-tempered
little sister these three days, and had tried not to feel hurt at
Hoodie's indifference to all her small overtures of sympathy. And now
to be told by Martin to hold her tongue when all she meant was to try to
make things better, was not easy to bear.

"I'm sure Hoodie wants to get flowers to put on birdie's grave," she
thought to herself, as she wiped away the tears called forth by Martin's
sharp words. "I think she _might_ have told me about it and asked me to
go too."

But she said nothing about it, and set off uncomplainingly on her
solitary walk with Martin, for the two little boys were spending the
afternoon with the children at the Rectory.

Hoodie marched Lucy straight off to the wood. Primroses were the flowers
on which her heart was set, for birdie's grave, as Maudie had guessed.
She had seen them growing in the wood in the spring in great numbers and
beauty, and no flower, she had settled in her mind, could look so pretty
on birdie's grave. She said very little to Lucy, having satisfied
herself that the knife to dig the roots up with and the basket to carry
them home in had not been forgotten, she walked along in silence. But
when they reached the wood and had gone some little way into it and no
primroses were to be seen Hoodie looked very much disappointed.

"There were such lots," she said to herself.

"Lots of what, Miss Hoodie?" asked Lucy, thinking her charge the oddest
child she had ever had to do with.

"Of p'imroses," said Hoodie. "That's what I came for, to plant them on
birdie's grave, y