"I hope, dears, you are now come home to live for the rest of your days," said Joan. "Your grand old house is cut to pieces, and three families dwelling in it; but most of your furniture is still there, packed away in the best chamber, all in that room as you left it, and the door hasn't been unlocked for many years,—scarcely opened, indeed, since you last slept there." Beaton replied to the effect that during all the time she lived abroad, her greatest desire was to return and end her days where she was born, and to be buried beside the one she loved above all the world; and that she intended, after a short rest, to go along the cliff to church-town to see his grave, and that she wished to go alone. "Poor dear Willy, the Lord rest with him," said An' Joan, "you will see by his grave that he hasn't been forgotten. On his breast there's a rosemary, the pride of my heart, grown to a bush that overtops his tombstone; a box-tree grows at the foot, and betwixt them sweet-brier, tansy, herb-of-grace, and such other long-lived and evergreen plants as are good for remembrance, besides a border of pinks and lillies. You'll see that none in the church-hay have been more lovingly tended, for I and others have planted on his grave fresh flowers when old ones died." When Cribba Head threw its shadow over the water, Beaton started on her sad pilgrimage, saying to her daughter, who wished to accompany her, "Remain, dear, with our old friend; tell her all about your uncle John, and how we lived in Brittany; she is longing to know but don't like to ask." The kind dame took Mary round her garden, well stocked with sweet old-fashioned flowers and many hives of bees; then passing through her orchard from one tree of choice fruit to another, equally good, they came to a clear brook, overhung by branches weighed down by their load of apples, pears, and plums that often fell in the stream and floated out to sea, unless found on their passage by children who often watched the water, gurgling among reeds and rocks below the orchard, for An' Joan's apples and plums. Milking time being come, Joan took her bucket, and they went up to Penberth Green, where the old dame's cow—little and good—was waiting to be milked. At that time, and long after, almost every cotter kept a cow, which found sufficient pasture in green lanes, and commons. An' Joan, having finished her out-door evening work, made a mullet-and-parsley pie, as that was a favourite supper dish. When placed on the hearth to bake, she said, "I have, for many years, been longing to know how it fared with your mother and uncle, and had given up all hopes of ever again seeing them, not knowing if they[115] were alive or dead; and you, poor lonely flower, have no other relations on your mother's side that I know of."