A shriek, shrill and piercing as only infant lungs could utter, made even Amy stop, eager though she was to reach the well where poor "Bony" might already have breathed his last. The one backward glance she cast showed the numerous children of the house of Jones toiling industriously skyward, in their mother's footsteps. Victoria, who was "eight and should have known better," had left William Gladstone to take care of himself, with the result that, being less than two years old and rather unsteady on his legs, he had toddled up to the biggest stone in the path, tried to step over it, lost his balance, and fallen. The hill was so steep that once the fat little fellow began to roll downwards he could not stop, and the terrified outcry first showed the mother his danger.
"He'll bump his head against a rock and—"
Mrs. Jones did not finish her sentence, but faced about and ran frantically down the slope, catching up her baby and smothering it with kisses, although she had assured the little fellow, at least a dozen times that day, that "he was the very plague of her life." She had dropped the rope, and Amy caught it, then turned and ran as fast upward as her neighbor was going in the other direction. Behind Amy still followed Victoria, Beatrice, and Belinda.
"You should go back. Your little brother's hurt," shouted she.
"Yes'm. He is often," coolly replied Victoria, who could have the minor excitement of examining the baby's bruises any day, but who did not intend to lose the greater one of "a man down the well" for any commonplace home matter.
Just before she came to the crest of the knoll Amy hesitated, and stood still. It seemed to her she could not go on and face the possible, even probable, tragedy at the top, and into the midst of her awestruck waiting there was hurled this startling question:—
"Say, miss, where do you s'pose you'll have the funeral? May I come?"
"Ugh! Oh, you horrid little thing!"
Victoria appeared so amazed at the effect of her inquiry that she stared back into Amy's face, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
"Wh-h—why!"