Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children

by Grace Greenwood

"Certainly, my love, you may take a little ride, if the donkey and the boy seem trustworthy."

So Robert was called, and questioned about Billy, and answered so frankly and modestly, that the young invalid was soon seated on donkey-back, and gently trotting down the heath, with Robert running at his side. He liked his attendant so well, that he soon got into conversation with him, asked his name, and told him his own. Robert was a little startled, when he found that his sociable new customer was a real young nobleman—Arthur, Lord Evremond.

When they returned to the carriage, his lordship felt so much benefited by his ride, and was so much pleased with both donkey and donkey-boy, that he engaged their services for the next afternoon.

Lady Evremond had come up to London from her country-seat, where she lived in great retirement, for the best medical advice for her son, who had come home from Eton, ill, and who, young as he was, seemed threatened with consumption. Her husband and daughter had died of that disease, in Italy, and she had not the heart to take her Arthur away from England to die.

The physicians gave her hope that the child would recover; he seemed better in the air of London than on his estate, which lay low in a little valley in Devonshire. His new exercise of donkey-riding, seemed to benefit him greatly for awhile. Two or three times a week the little lord drove out to Hampstead, to take his ride on the breezy heath. He became more and more friendly and confiding with Robert, whom he never treated as an inferior. He loved best to talk with him about the good he meant to do if God would only make him well, and let him grow up to be a man. He said that if he died, the title and estates must go to his cousin, who was a wicked, wasteful man, and who would do nothing for the poor and suffering; and that, he said, was what made it hardest for him to die. Next to that, was the thought of leaving his mother; but she would soon come to him in heaven, and all her grief be over—while the sorrows that his hard-hearted cousin might cause his poor tenants, would last a long time.

When the young lord spoke so sweetly and nobly, there was always such a holy light on his beautiful face that he seemed to have become already one of God's blessed angels, and Robert was almost ready to worship him. So great was the boy's reverence for his goodness, not for his title, that when Evremond asked him to call him "Arthur," instead of "my lord," he gently shook his head, and said: "I would rather not."

After a few weeks had gone by, Robert noticed that his noble friend seemed to be getting still weaker and paler. He talked more and more earnestly and tenderly of heaven, of his papa and angel sister, and seemed to feel yet more loving pity for all the poor and suffering. He now seldom rode faster than a walk, his voice grew faint, he rested his hand wearily on Robert's shoulder, and fell languidly into his arms, when he dismounted.

At last he failed to keep his engagement at the heath. Day after day, a whole week went by, and still he did not come, and poor Robert was almost heart-broken with disappointment and anxiety. At length, to his great joy, he saw the well-known carriage coming! Alas, it was empty! The footman brought a message from Lady Evremond—her son had been taken alarmingly ill, the night after his last ride—he had been failing ever since, and now it was thought he could not live many hours. The carriage was sent for his friend Robert, whom he wished to see before he died.

Robert sent home his donkey by a friend, and sprang into the carriage, where he buried his face in his hands and wept all the way to Grosvenor Square.

He was conducted into a great hall, up a noble staircase, through several elegant rooms, filled with beautiful and costly things, strange enough to poor Robert, but his eyes were too full of tears and his heart of grief to notice them. A chamber door was opened softly before him, and Robert saw his friend lying on a couch by the window, with his head resting in his mother's lap. His eyes were closed, and his face so deathly pale that Robert thought he had come too late, and staggering forward, he fell at the young lord's feet, and hiding his face against them, sobbed aloud.