e as himself, though nobody knew his surname.

'Was that why they called me that?' he asked eagerly, the first time
Betty told him the story.

Betty could not say for certain, but she and Angel had fancied that
Godfrey's father, who had been at Oakfield often when he was a little
boy, might have been thinking of his English home when he chose the
name, for he had no relation called Godfrey. At any rate Betty and her
nephew decided that it must have been so, and when Godfrey came to
godparents in the Catechism and did not know who his own had been, he
christened the great Norman baron 'godpapa,' and loved to sit at
Betty's feet with his chin on her knee, looking up with his wide grey
eyes into hers, while she told how well the gallant Sir Godfrey had
fought at Hastings, and how the king had given him the wide stretch of
fair pasture and forest as a reward for his valour, and how perhaps the
acorn was the very first thing he planted, and how his wife liked to
come out on a summer evening and mark how it grew into a young tree,
and how his grandchildren and great-grandchildren played under its
shadow.

'And did he sit under it when it was a big tree?' asked Godfrey in his
earnest way.

'Well, no, I don't think he could have himself, because, you see, by
that time he must have been dead and buried in the church--very likely
close by Miss Jane, with his figure all in armour on the top, and a
little dog at his feet.'

'No, but I would rather have him sitting under the oak,' persisted
Godfrey; 'make it a different end, Auntie Betty,' and as Angelica came
round the end of the yew hedge, he ran to meet her, exclaiming,

'Auntie Angel, make Auntie Betty make godpapa Godfrey sit under his own
tree.'

Angel sat down and drew him to her side, while Betty repeated:

'I can't, Godfrey, because it wouldn't be real. I told you he couldn't
be alive when it was a big tree, unless he got as old as the people at
the beginning of the Bible.'

'You see, Godfrey dear,' began Angel in her quiet way, 'it is often
like that with the good things people do; they don't get all the good
of them themselves, but somebody else, perhaps ever so long after, is
the happier for what they have done. I think it is rather nice to
think of our dear old oak being green and shady year after year, and
reminding us that the man who planted it so long ago helped to make
Oakfield a little prettier. You know everything that God puts into the
world, ani