'Never I, while you stay here,' I answered.
'It repents me often,' she said, 'that I discovered to you my design of coming up hither. I would you were safe at home again.'
'I have no home, but where you are,' said I.
'Poor faithful little heart!' she says, sighing. 'Well, get on with thy history-writing; I must go forth presently, when all is quiet again; and when I return thou shalt show me what thou hast written. Tell the tale orderly, Lucy; begin at the beginning with "Once upon a time there lived two sisters; the elder was a fool, but the younger one loved her"'—and before I could say a word she had slipt away.
I sat awhile, too much disquieted to write, listening against my will for the heavy sounds that told how the dead man next door was being carried forth and laid in the cart; but the thing lumbered away at last, its cracked bell tinkling dolefully; and I found courage to take to my work.
But to begin at the beginning is not so easy, especially for one so unskilful with her pen as I. And who shall say what are the beginnings of the things that befall us? Perhaps they lie far off, long before our little life itself began.
CHAPTER I.
HOW WE WERE VISITED BY TWO OF OUR KINSFOLK, OUR FATHER BEING DEAD; AND HOW THEY BEHAVED THEMSELVES TOWARD US.