CHAPTER VIII
THE FIDDLER OF APPLE TREE LANE
PEOPLE said that the Brighton children could "never manage," when it was said that they were planning to live in the little cottage on the hill above Medford Valley.
"There's always a wind there from the sea, dearie," said old Granny Fullerton to Barbara Brighton. "It will search out your very bones, come winter."
Barbara shook her head cheerfully. A plump and rosy young person of twelve years old does not worry much about cold winds.
People said also, with the strange blindness of those who can live close by for years and yet never know what is in their neighbors' hearts, that it was an odd thing that Howard Brighton should have built that little house so far from the town in the midst of that great stretch of wild land where so few folk lived.
"It is marshy in the valley and wooded on the hills," Granny Fullerton said to Barbara, "with never a neighbor for miles. Of course the land has been in your family time out of mind, but those that
127
