“I s’pose he wanted to have some a—­aventures, don’t you call them?  I play at that, you know.  All sorts of things happen to me before I sit down at the beech tree, but—­but it’s so different with God.  Why, I should be fearful unhappy if I got away from Him.  I couldn’t, could I, uncle?  Who would take care of me and love me when I’m asleep?  And who would listen to my prayers?  Why, Uncle Edward, I think I should die of fright if I got away from God.  Do tell me I couldn’t.”

Milly had stopped short, and grasped hold of Sir Edward’s coat in her growing excitement.  He glanced at her flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes.

“You foolish child, there is no fear of your getting away from God.  Don’t be so excitable.  We will change the subject.  I want to see Maxwell, so we will go through the wood.”

Maxwell was Sir Edward’s head game-keeper, and a little later found them at his pretty cottage at the edge of the wood.  It was Milly’s first visit, and Mrs. Maxwell, a motherly-looking body, greeted her with such a sunshiny smile that the child drew near to her instinctively.

“What a lovely room,” she exclaimed, looking round the homely little kitchen with a child’s admiring eyes, “and what a beautiful cat!  May I stroke her?”

Assent being given, Milly was soon seated in a large cushioned chair, a fat tabby cat on her lap, and while Sir Edward was occupied with his keeper she was making fast friends with the wife.

“Uncle Edward,” she said, when they had taken their leave and were walking homewards, “Mrs. Maxwell has asked me to go to tea with her to-morrow.  May I—­all by myself?”

“Ask your nurse; I have no objection.”

“I should love to live in her house,” continued the child eagerly; “it is all among the trees, and I love trees.  And this wood is so lovely.  Why, I might get lost in it, mightn’t I?  I have never been here before.  In my story-books, children always get lost in a wood.  Uncle Edward, do you think the trees talk to one another?  I always think they do.  Look at them now.  They are just shaking their heads together and whispering, aren’t they?  Whispering very gently to-day, because it is Sunday.  Sometimes they get angry with one another and scream, but I like to hear them hum and sing best.  Nurse says it’s the wind that makes them do it.  Don’t you like to hear them?  When I lie in bed I listen to them around the house, and I always want to sing with them.  Nurse doesn’t like it.  She says it’s the wind moaning.  I think it’s the trees singing to God, and I love them when they do it.  Which do you think it is?”

And so Milly chatted on, and Sir Edward listened, and put in a word or two occasionally, and on the whole did not find his small niece bad company.  He told her when they entered the house that she could go to church every Sunday morning in future with him, and that sent Milly to the nursery with a radiant face, there to confide to nurse that she had had a “lovely time,” and was going to tea as often as she might with “Mrs. Maxwell in the wood.”