As she did so, her eye fell upon an old laborer, who was sitting close to her, on a felled tree, under the shelter of a paling, eating his dinner.

A little girl, some six years old, who had brought him his meal tied up in a handkerchief, was crouching near his feet.
They had both seen her before she had seen them, and when she noticed them, were staring at her with all their eyes.

She and they were on the same side of the farmyard paling, and so she could reach them and speak to them without difficulty.

There was, apparently, no other person near enough to listen, and it occurred to her that she might at any rate make a friend of this old man.

His name, he said, was Enoch Gubby, and the girl was his grandchild.