"Pick it up, then, and bring it to me, quick, can't you, child," cried Hal, "for Lady Di.'s sons are waiting for me?"
Little Patty did not know anything about Lady Di.'s sons; but as she was very good-natured, and saw that her cousin Hal was, for some reason or other, in a desperate hurry, she ran down stairs as fast as she possibly could towards the landing-place, where the handkerchief lay:—but alas! Before she reached the handkerchief she fell, rolling down a whole flight of stairs; and, when her fall was at last stopped by the landing-place, she did not cry, but she writhed as if she was in great pain.
"Where are you hurt, my love?" said Mr. Gresham, who came instantly, on hearing the noise of some one falling down stairs.
"Where are you hurt, my dear?"
"Here, Papa," said the little girl, touching her ankle, which she had decently covered with her gown: "I believe I am hurt here, but not much," added she, trying to rise; "only it hurts me when I move."
"I'll carry you, don't move then," said her father; and he took her up in his arms.
"My shoe, I've lost one of my shoes," said she. Ben looked for it upon the stairs, and he found it sticking in a loop of whipcord, which was entangled round one of the balusters. When this cord was drawn forth, it appeared that it was the very same jagged, entangled piece which Hal had pulled off his parcel. He had diverted himself with running up and down stairs, whipping the balusters with it, as he thought he could convert it to no better use; and with his usual carelessness, he at last left it hanging just where he happened to throw it, when the dinner-bell rang. Poor little Patty's ankle was terribly sprained, and Hal reproached himself for his folly, and would have reproached himself longer, perhaps, if Lady Di. Sweepstakes' sons had not hurried him away.
In the evening, Patty could not run about as she used to do; but she sat upon the sofa, and she said that "she did not feel the pain of her ankle so much whilst Ben was so good as to play at jack-straws with her."
"That's right, Ben; never be ashamed of being good-natured to those who are younger and weaker than yourself," said his uncle, smiling at seeing him produce his whipcord, to indulge his little cousin with a game at her favorite cat's-cradle. "I shall not think you one bit less manly, because I see you playing at cat's-cradle with a child six years old."
Hal, however, was not precisely of his uncle's opinion; for when he returned in the evening and saw Ben playing with his little cousin, he could not help smiling contemptuously, and asked if he had been playing at cat's-cradle all night. In a heedless manner he made some inquiries after Patty's sprained ankle, and then he ran on to tell all the news he had heard at Lady Diana Sweepstakes'—news which he thought would make him appear a person of vast importance.