Why, I might get lost in it, mightn't I? I have never been here before.
In my story-books, children always get lost in a wood. Uncle Edward, do
you think the trees talk to one another? I always think they do. Look
at them now. They are just shaking their heads together and whispering,
aren't they? Whispering very gently to-day, because it is Sunday.
Sometimes they get angry with one another and scream, but I like to hear
them hum and sing best. Nurse says it's the wind that makes them do it.
Don't you like to hear them? When I lie in bed I listen to them around
the house, and I always want to sing with them. Nurse doesn't like it.
She says it's the wind moaning. I think it's the trees singing to God,
and I love them when they do it. Which do you think it is?"

And so Milly chatted on, and Sir Edward listened, and put in a word or
two occasionally, and on the whole did not find his small niece bad
company. He told her when they entered the house that she could go to
church every Sunday morning in future with him, and that sent Milly to
the nursery with a radiant face, there to confide to nurse that she had
had a "lovely time," and was going to tea as often as she might with
"Mrs. Maxwell in the wood."




CHAPTER IV.


MRS. MAXWELL'S SORROW.

Milly spent a very happy afternoon at the keeper's cottage the next day,
and came down to dessert in the evening so full of her visit that she