"I said," explained Juliet, slightly abashed by her aunt's courteous manner--"I said I wanted to go to the Crystal Palace. Father said once that he would take us on a bank holiday, but then we got poor, and so he never kept his word. We always have been poor, we never had mutton-chops but only three times; and now we are poorer than we used to be, and we don't even get rice puddings." "Well, I'll try and give you rice puddings, and suet ones too." "Oh, I don't care," said the child relapsing into her usual manner; "I don't want your puddings." The carriage soon filled with other passengers, and there came over Mrs. Rowles a slight sensation of shame when she saw how they glanced at Juliet in her patched frock and untidy hat. And the neat country-woman felt that to walk with this London child through the village of Littlebourne, where every creature, down to the cows and cats and dogs, all knew the lock-keeper's wife, would be a great trial of courage. It was only now that Mrs. Rowles realized the condition of many of the working-class (_so called_, for harder work is done by heads than by hands) in the great city, who yet are not what is known as "poor." The Mitchell family had drifted away from the Rowles family. A letter now and then passed between them, but Rowles had held such a prejudice against Mitchell's employment that really no intercourse had taken place between the two families. Mrs. Rowles had been drawn, she knew not how, but by some sort of instinct, to visit her brother-in-law this day; and she had further been impelled to offer Juliet a trip to the country. But now she almost regretted it. Juliet sat opposite her aunt, looking out blankly at the houses as the train passed through the western suburbs. After a while she stood up at the window. Fields and trees were beginning to be more frequent than at first. Soon the houses became rare, and the fields continuous. Juliet's lips were muttering something which Mrs. Rowles could not hear in the noise made by the train. She leaned forward to the child. "What do you say?" "Pretty churchyard!" said Juliet. "_What_ do you say?" "Pretty churchyard' pretty churchyard!" "Whatever do you mean, my child!" "I mean, this churchyard is bigger and prettier than the churchyards in London, where I used to play when I was little." Mrs. Rowles's eyes filled with tears. She understood now that Juliet had only known trees and flowers by seeing them in the churchyards of London, disused for the dead, and turned into gardens--grim enough--for the living. And so to the child's mind green grass and waving boughs seemed to be always disused churchyards. Such sad ignorance would seem impossible, if we did not know it to be a _fact_. "But, Juliet, these are fields. Grass grows in them for the cows and sheep to eat, and corn to make us bread, and flowers to make us happy and to make us good."