"
Brina swung out of the room at her mistress' bidding. Robin,
uncomfortable but immensely curious and excited, sat on the edge of the
settle and chattered, while Beryl, well behind their silent hostess,
made mysterious signs with fingers and lips and eyes.
"We think this is the loveliest spot--the old town and the mill and this
lane--and all. No one would ever dream from the road that this house was
here. Has it a name? First I called it the House of Bread and Cake and
Sugar--like the fairy story, but it ought to be called the House of
Rushing Waters, hadn't it?"
"That will do--very nicely. No, no one would know from the road that the
house stands here."
But when Robin ventured: "Aren't you ever lonely?" there was a
perceptible tightening of the lips that made her sorry she had asked it.
"Robin, there's something funny about that whole place," declared Beryl,
half-an-hour later as they went back down the lane. "I was doing some
thinking while you were talking."
"She's a dear old lady, Beryl. I feel sorry for her."
"Oh, yes, dear enough. _I_ thought she was stand-offish. But you don't
think for a moment she belongs 'round here, in the same town with that
old cheese down at the store?"
Robin admitted that everything about her House of Rushing Waters was
very different from the Forgotten Village.
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