The church stood at one end of the village in the middle of a beautiful churchyard and burying-ground, surrounded by fine trees—­ flowering chestnuts and sweet-scented limes, while every here and there blossomed beautiful red May-trees, lilacs, laburnums, syringas and roses.  From this, the one street—­lined on either side by little cottages, with here and there a small shop—­led to the green, around which stood in irregular fashion pretty houses and large cottages with gardens before their doors.  The doctor lived in one of these houses, and the curate, Mr. Harburton, in another, and Miss Barley and Miss Grace Barley in a third, and all the houses looked out on the green and the road and across at each other, but all those who dwelt in them were so neighbourly and friendly, this did not matter at all.

Jessie thought the houses by the green were perfectly lovely, they had creepers and roses growing over them, and window-boxes full of flowers.  She thought the green was lovely too, and almost wished that she lived by it that she might be able to see the donkeys and the ducks which were usually standing about cropping the grass, or poking about in the little stream which ran along one side of the green.  She thought the ivy-covered church, with the trees and the hawthorns all about it, one of the most beautiful sights in the world, and nothing she loved better than to walk with granp along the sweet-scented roads along by the green and through the village street to church.

Mrs. Dawson did not go in the morning, as a rule.  “Grandfather must have a nice hot dinner once a week,” she declared, so she stayed at home to cook it; but they all went together to the evening service, and Jessie dearly loved the walk to church in the quiet summer’s evening, with granp and granny on either side of her, and home again through the gathering twilight, sweet with the scent from the gardens and hedges.

Sometimes, when they got home, granny would give them their supper in the garden, if the weather was very warm, and Jessie loved this.  While granny was helping her on with her big print overall, grandfather would carry out two big arm-chairs, and a little one for Jessie, and there they would sit, with their plates on their laps and their mugs beside them, and eat and talk until darkness or the falling dew drove them in.

Sometimes they repeated hymns, verse and verse, first grandfather, then granny, and by and by, as she came to know them, Jessie herself would take her turn too.  Sometimes they would repeat a psalm or two in the same way, or a chapter, and before very long they had taught Jessie some of these also, so that, to her great delight, she could join in with them.

Then came bedtime, when she knelt in her little white nightgown beside her bed and repeated—­