home you've a nice little room now, all carpeted and
curtained, haven't you? And a pretty little bed all for yourself? We've
nothing like that--we've only one room besides the kitchen."

Hoodie did not at once reply. She appeared to be thinking things over.

"I'd _like_ to stay," she remarked after a while, "but I'd rather be let
alone with you and baby. I don't like zat man. But if you haven't a room
for me perhaps I'd better go and look for a grandmother's cottage again,
and I'll come and see you sometimes, and baby, little baby's mother."

"Yes, that you must, Missy, and bring little brothers too. You won't
think of going off to look for your grandmother again just yet. Perhaps
it's quite a long way off by the railway she lives. Couldn't you ask
your mamma to write her a letter and tell her how much you'd like to see
her?"

"But I want to go to her _cottage_," persisted Hoodie. "I know it is a
cottage, Martin said so. I shouldn't want her if she wasn't in a
cottage. And I saw it in the Hoodie-girl picture too."

This was getting beyond poor Mrs. David; and finding herself not
understood, added to Hoodie's irritation. She was half way, more than
half way, fully three-quarters of the way into one of her hopeless
crying fits, when fortunately there came an interruption.

Hasty steps were heard coming up the garden path, followed by a hasty
knock at the door. And almost before Lizzie could get to open it, two
people hurried into the room. They were Martin and Cross the coachman.
Hoodie looked up calmly.

"Has you come to fetch me?" she inquired. "I didn't _want_ to go home,
but little baby's mother hasn't got enough little beds, but I'm going to
come back here again. I _will_, whatever you say."

Well as Martin knew the child, this was a degree too much for her. To
have spent between two and three hours in really terrible anxiety about
the little girl; to have had to bear some amount of reproach for not
having sooner discovered Hoodie's escape; to have rushed off to fetch
her on receiving the joyful news from the young labourer as he drove
past Mr. Caryll's house, her heart full of the tenderest pity for her
stray nursling who she never doubted had somehow lost her way,--all this
had been trying enough for poor Martin. But to be met in this heartless
way by the child--before strangers, too--to be coolly defied beforehand,
as it were--it was too much. It was a toss-up between tears and temper.
Unfortunately Martin