“Oh, yes,” said Cynthia.

“And country folks?  L—­like country folks better than city folks?”

“I didn’t know many city folks,” said Cynthia.  “I liked the old doctor who sent Daddy up here ever so much, and I liked Mrs. Darwin.”

“Mis’ Darwin?”

“She kept the house we lived in.  She used to give me cookies,” said Cynthia, “and bread to feed the pigeons.”

“Pigeons?  F-folks keep pigeons in the city?”

“Oh, no,” said Cynthia, laughing at such an idea; “the pigeons came on the roof under our window, and they used to fly right up on the window-sill and feed out of my hand.  They kept me company while Daddy, was away, working.  On Sundays we used to go into the Common and feed them, before Daddy got sick.  The Common was something like the country, only not half as nice.”

“C-couldn’t pick flowers in the Common and go barefoot—­e—­couldn’t go barefoot, Cynthy?”

“Oh, no,” said Cynthia, laughing again at his sober face.

“C-couldn’t dig up the Common and plant flowers—­could you?”

“Of course you couldn’t.”

“P-plant ’em out there?” asked Jethro.

“Oh, yes,” cried Cynthia; “I’ll show you.”  She hesitated a moment, and then thrust her hand into his.  “Do you want to see?”

“Guess I do,” said he, energetically, and she led him into the garden, pointing out with pride the rows of sweet peas and pansies, which she had made herself.  Impelled by a strange curiosity, William Wetherell went to the door and watched them.  There was a look on the face of Jethro Bass that was new to it as he listened to the child talk of the wondrous things around them that summer’s day,—­the flowers and the bees and the brook (they must go down and stand on the brink of it), and the songs of the vireo and the hermit thrush.

“Hain’t lonely here, Cynthy—­hain’t lonely here?” he said.

“Not in the country,” said Cynthia.  Suddenly she lifted her eyes to his with a questioning look.  “Are you lonely, sometimes?”

He did not answer at once.

“Not with you, Cynthy—­not with you.”

By all of which it will be seen that the acquaintance was progressing.  They sat down for a while on the old millstone that formed the step, and there discussed Cynthia’s tastes.  She was too old for dolls, Jethro supposed.  Yes, Cynthia was too old for dolls.  She did not say so, but the only doll she had ever owned had become insipid when the delight of such a reality as taking care of a helpless father had been thrust upon her.  Books, suggested Jethro.  Books she had known from her earliest infancy:  they had been piled around that bedroom over the roof.  Books and book lore and the command of the English tongue were William Wetherell’s only legacies to his daughter, and many an evening that spring she had read him to sleep from classic volumes of prose and poetry I hesitate to name, for fear you will think her precocious.  They went across the green to Cousin Ephraim Prescott’s harness shop, where Jethro had tied his horse, and it was settled that Cynthia liked books.