The instant the door opened, the flower-lover at the fence started on a run after the cows, which finding themselves not urged from behind, had stopped and were contentedly cropping the grass beside the road. In a few minutes she had them safely shut into their pasture, and turned back towards the village. As she passed Miss Hester, that lady was tying up some straggling vines, and almost to her own surprise, moved by her unwonted feeling of pity for the child, she hastily picked half a dozen stems of the fragrant blossoms and held them out. "Want some?" she said shortly, almost gruffly, to the half-frightened child. The girl stopped. "Oh, Miss Hester!" she said doubtingly, half afraid of the strange-looking, little woman who lived by herself, and was never known to speak to anybody. "If you don't want 'em," said Miss Hester savagely, "you needn't have 'em," and she flung the flowers far over the fence and turned away. Maggie--for that was her name--with a cry of horror sprang eagerly after them, picked them up carefully, shook off the dust, and turned again to the little garden. But Miss Hester had gone in and shut the door, and slowly, but in a state of rapture, the child went on--hugging and caressing her flowers,--to what had been her home since her mother, a year before, had been carried from their poor room to the hospital, and never come back. She lived with a woman who added a bit to her scanty earnings by taking the village cows on their morning and evening journeys, and for this service she gave Maggie a shelter and a share of the scanty food on her table. When she went with the cows that evening, Maggie looked eagerly into the little garden as she passed, but Miss Hester was not there. Maggie could not see her, but she sat behind her blind looking out eagerly. Could it be to see the child? Maggie hesitated; she wanted to say "Thank you," yet she was half afraid of the strange, silent woman. She waited a moment, hoping she would come out, but all was still, and slowly and lingeringly at last she went on. In this odd way began a curious acquaintance between the lonely woman and the still more friendless girl. Sometimes, if Miss Hester happened to be in her garden when Maggie went by, she would half reluctantly toss a flower over the fence, which Maggie always received with delight, while still half afraid of the giver. But generally Hester, with a strange feeling of shyness, managed to be in the house, where strange to say, she hung around the window and seemed unable to settle to anything, till the pale little thing had passed. So it went on, till winter settled down grim and cold on that New England village, and the cows went no more to the snow-covered pasture, and Maggie--fixed up a bit as to clothes by some kind ladies of the village--went every day to school. As the weather grew colder, Miss Hester shut herself more and more into her house, and so months passed and the strange acquaintance progressed no farther.