CHAPTER II

A Curious Playground

AUDREY stood a long time looking out of that window. It opened like a door, and the ground outside was only two feet below it. Audrey could get into her playground in a moment by jumping through the window; and oh, how she longed to be there!

It was a strange place in which to play, for it was a very old and long-disused churchyard. A great tombstone stood close to the window, and shut out much of Audrey's view. A green, moss-grown, dirty old tombstone it looked; but it was only like all the other stones in that melancholy and deserted place.

They had all been put up to the memory of people long since dead—long since forgotten. No loving hands ever brought flowers or wreaths to lay on those old graves, for the ones who loved them and cared for them had themselves been long since numbered with the dead, and were lying in their own quiet resting-places.

Behind the old stones, so black with the smoke of years, so discoloured and weather-stained by the dews of many a summer and the rains of many a winter, Audrey could see the ancient church, which was fully as dismal and deserted as were the graves amongst which it stood. It had been built eight hundred years ago, and at one time large and fashionable congregations had no doubt attended it. Now they had all passed away, and with them had departed the usefulness of the old church. It was shut up and neglected, and was left to the spiders and other creeping things, which had made a happy home there.

That old churchyard was the happiest place in the world to Audrey; she had loved it ever since she was a little child. She knew every corner of it; she felt as if it belonged to her, and as if no one else had a right to be there—no one except little Stephen.

She shared everything with him, and she loved him as if he were her brother. There he was now under the lilac tree, sitting patiently waiting for her to come; and Aunt Cordelia would not let her go out to him. How disappointed Stephen would be! A tear trickled down Audrey's cheek at the thought, and fell on the top of poor Miss Olivia's head.

"What—Audrey crying!" said her aunt, coming briskly into the room. "What is it all about?"

Audrey wiped the tear off Miss Olivia's hair, and made no answer.

"What?" said her aunt. "Because I said you were not to go out? Now, Audrey!"

"Aunt, it isn't that—it isn't that," sobbed Audrey. "It's because Stephen will be disappointed, and it's his birthday. He is five years old to-day, is Stephen."

"Oh, it's his birthday, is it?" said her aunt, relenting. "Well, I did not know that. I suppose I must let you go; but mind your pinafore—that's all!"

"Thank you, aunty!" said Audrey, her face filling with sunshine in a moment, as she climbed on a chair, crept through the small square casement, and jumped to the ground outside.

The little boy gave a cry of joy as he saw her, and came slowly forward to meet her. He could not come quickly, for Stephen was a crippled child, and had never known what it was to run or to jump like other children.

When he was a baby, he was so small that he was quite a curiosity; and the neighbours declared that such a child had never been seen before. But his father had nursed him and watched him as a gardener tends and watches a little sickly plant of which he is very fond. And Stephen had learnt to walk when he was three years old, and could now creep about the churchyard and play quietly with Audrey amongst the old graves. He was his father's only treasure, for Stephen's mother had died when he was a baby; and he loved the little lad with all the love of his heart.

Stephen's father was a cobbler, and his window also opened on the churchyard; and there he sat mending his shoes, and now and then glancing at the children at their play. He was never happy when Stephen was out of his sight, for the child's back was deformed and crooked, and his legs were weak and unsound, and his father always feared some evil might befall him.

And this was Stephen's birthday, and he was five years old.

"Oh, Audrey, I'm glad you've come!" he cried. "I've waited and waited till school should leave, and it did seem so long! I've been looking in at the window of the church and, Audrey, do you know, there's a bird building his nest inside, just over the pulpit. Come and look!"

The two children went round to the other side of the church, and climbing on the top of a large flat tombstone they peered in through the yellow and discoloured panes of the window. What a strange place it was!

The high, rotten old pulpit looked as if it must soon fall; the narrow brown pews, with their high backs, and the large square pews, where the grand people once sat, were all alike gradually slipping into crooked positions, and leaning over on the uneven stone floor.

Audrey and Stephen loved to look into that old church; they peeped in at all times of the day—in the morning, when the church looked bright and almost cheerful, as the sunbeams danced on the old pillars and streamed down the deserted aisles; in the afternoon, when the long shadows fell across the chancel, and the coloured window at the western end threw blue and red lights on the font and on the mouldy pavement below; and again in the evening, just before going to bed, when the old church was weird and ghostly, and the stone figures on the tombs in the chancel looked to the children as if they were alive, and might stand up and call to them as they watched.

Stephen would tremble at such times and cling fast to Audrey; but she was never afraid of the old church by night or by day, and she would have slept as soundly and as happily in one of the square pews as she did in her own bed at home.

This afternoon the church looked very bright, and the sunshine showed the dust and cobwebs which clung to the roof, as Stephen pointed out the nest he had discovered.

It was a swallow's nest, and presently they saw the swallows themselves flying in and out of a broken pane in the east window, and adding finishing touches to their neat little nest.

"Isn't it lovely?" said Audrey. "We will come every day to watch them, and we shall see if any little birds come in the nest."

Then she lifted Stephen down from the stone, and they wandered together through the churchyard. What a forlorn place it was, full of long grass and weeds! All the grave-stones seemed to have fallen out of place, just as all the pews had done. Some were leaning one way and some another.

The names on most of them had long since been worn away, but others were still quite distinct; and Audrey loved to spell them out and to calculate how long it was since those buried in the old graves had died.

In one corner of the churchyard was a swing, which Stephen's father had put up for them; and just underneath the wall of the church was a hutch, where Stephen's white rabbit lived.

It was very, very seldom that any one visited the old church, except the deaf old woman who had the key of the gate; and she only came when some stranger, passing through the old city, happened to discover the whereabouts of the ancient building, and made it worth her while to unlock the door.