In spite of this she spent a pleasant afternoon, sitting in that sunny place, handling flowers, asking questions about them, and getting the sort of answers she liked; not dry botanical names and facts, but all the delicate traits, curious habits, and poetical romances of the sweet things, as if the speaker knew and loved them as friends, not merely valued them as merchandise. They had just finished when the great dog came bouncing in with a basket in his mouth. “Mother wants eggs: will you come to the barn and get them? Hay is wholesome, and you can feed the doves if you like,” said David, leading the way with Bran rioting about him. “Why don’t he offer to put up a swing for me, or get me a doll? It’s the pinafore that deceives him. Never mind: I rather like it after all,” thought Christie; but she left the apron behind her, and followed with the most dignified air. It did not last long, however, for the sights and sounds that greeted her, carried her back to the days of egg-hunting in Uncle Enos’s big barn; and, before she knew it, she was rustling through the hay mows, talking to the cow and receiving the attentions of Bran with a satisfaction it was impossible to conceal. The hens gathered about her feet cocking their expectant eyes at her; the doves came circling round her head; the cow stared placidly, and the inquisitive horse responded affably when she offered him a handful of hay. “How tame they all are! I like animals, they are so contented and intelligent,” she said, as a plump dove lit on her shoulder with an impatient coo. “That was Kitty’s pet, she always fed the fowls. Would you like to do it?” and David offered a little measure of oats. “Very much;” and Christie began to scatter the grain, wondering who “Kitty” was. As if he saw the wish in her face, David added, while he shelled corn for the hens: “She was the little girl who was with us last. Her father kept her in a factory, and took all her wages, barely giving her clothes and food enough to keep her alive. The poor child ran away, and was trying to hide when Mr. Power found and sent her here to be cared for.” “As he did me?” said Christie quickly. “Yes, that’s a way he has.” “A very kind and Christian way. Why didn’t she stay?” “Well, it was rather quiet for the lively little thing, and rather too near the city, so we got a good place up in the country where she could go to school and learn housework. The mill had left her no time for these things, and at fifteen she was as ignorant as a child.” “You must miss her.” “I do very much.” “Was she pretty?” “She looked like a little rose sometimes,” and David smiled to himself as he fed the gray hens. Christie immediately made a picture of the “lively little thing” with a face “like a rose,” and was uncomfortably conscious that she did not look half as well feeding doves as Kitty must have done.