In one of the outlying cottages—a small white one, containing but two rooms, but standing in a little garden always full of bright flowers, as indeed were the two clean windows, and even the tiny back yard—in this cottage lived a little old woman, whose name was Betty Giles. She had been a servant in her youth; then she married, and brought up a numerous family. Her husband was a good, steady man, and her married life had been happy. Then her husband died, and she was left alone, for her boys were married, and her girls either married or in service. Her married children would gladly have given her a home, for she was one who was sure of a welcome, owing to her kindly, pleasant ways and her industry. But Betty would not go to any one of them, nor to all of them in turn, which was another plan proposed to her. She gave up her big cottage, and took this tiny one, and there she contrived to support herself by various small industries. She kept a small shop, selling bread of her own making, always light and sweet, tea and sugar and biscuits, and several other things. But her principal income was derived from her scrap of garden. She grew patches of early annuals, which somehow always turned out very fine, so that the ladies on the green would buy them eagerly instead of trying to grow them for themselves. When these were cleared away, she sowed autumn flowers. In boxes, cunningly hung from the wall at the back of her cottage, and all round the very small yard, she grew cuttings of geraniums, chrysanthemums, fuchsias, etc., the parent plants making a gorgeous show in the front garden. Betty's husband had been a gardener, and she understood and loved flowers. Whether she loved them because she understood them, or understood because she loved, I really cannot say. Between her manifold employments and her many visits to and from her sons and daughters, Betty lived a busy and a happy life. She was a little woman, with a face like a pink-and-red apple—a rather withered apple, I confess. Her face, her dress, her cap and apron, her house and her furniture were always beautifully and spotlessly clean. One evening in September—it was only September, but the weather had broken, and it was very cold—Betty sat in her snug kitchen reading her Bible; a very slow and solemn process was Betty's reading. Her lonely life had given her a habit of talking to herself, for she had an active tongue and no one else to talk to. "That," said Betty, "is a tex' as sticks in the memory, so I'll stop here. Ah me! It must be fine to be a scholar like some of my young folk—no spelling out of words for them! 'Tis a blessing, for the like of me, that the Bible is read out loud in church, for one does seem to take it in better when one doesn't have to spell."