things
and taking care of him when he should come home. How little she had
dreamt that the mending would be done for Bernard's son! Godfrey had
not talked about his father, and Angel had asked no questions and had
checked Betty and Penelope. If he should confide in them and tell them
about his West Indian home, she would wait and let him do it in his own
good time. Just now, everything was strange to him, and she wanted to
let him take it in and get used to it all; she could not look for him
to love them and be at home with them quite yet. You see, if she was
not very quick, she was a very patient person, this Angel; she was
content to wait and let her flowers grow, and trust to sun and rain to
do the work, without wanting to help by digging them up every day or
two to see how the roots looked. And so she sat and thought her gentle
thoughts in the creeper-framed window, until she began to wonder where
Betty and Godfrey were, and decided to go and meet them. She went down
the road, where the wind blew fresh across the common, past one or two
cottages, with a word here and there to the children playing at the
doors, till she came in sight of the old 'Royal Oak,' the village inn,
standing back from the road. In front of the inn was the tree which
gave the name both to the house and the village, a noble old oak,
hollow inside and propped up with iron supports, but still green above.
A tree with a history it was, a tree which could have told many a tale,
if it could have spoken, of generations who had passed away, while
still its leaves budded fresh and green spring-time after spring-time,
and dropped in a russet carpet when the November frosts touched them
with cold fingers. But there seemed to be some unusual excitement
going on about the oak to-day; a little crowd was collected beneath it:
Mr. Collins the innkeeper, and the men and maids, John Ware the miller,
pretty Patty Rogers, Nancy's elder sister, Nancy herself, who was
always in the forefront when anything was going on, two or three women
from the cottages, and, what startled Angel most, Betty, with her shady
hat tumbling down her back, gazing up anxiously into the tree, but not
Godfrey. Angel quickened her steps and looked where they were looking,
and as she drew nearer she heard a chorus of voices.

'Come down, come down, Godfrey, dear Godfrey, you naughty, naughty
little boy, come down!'

'Come down, young master; the bough's rotten, 'twon't bear you.'