Mary B—— began:—
"Oft I had heard of Lucy Grey";
Nancy C—— piped up:—
"'How many are you, then,' said I,
'If there are two in heaven?'
The little maiden did reply,
'O Master! we are seven.'"
Among the group I seemed to recognize poor pale little Charley F——, who they told me years ago was laid in St. John's Churchyard after they took him out of the pond, near the mill-stream, that terrible Saturday afternoon. He too read from his well-worn, green-baize-covered book,—
"The dew was falling fast, the stars began to blink."
Other white-headed little urchins trotted along very near me all the way, and kept saying over and over their "spirit ditties of no tone" till I reached the village inn, and sat down as if in a dream of long-past years.
Two years ago I stood by Wordsworth's grave in the churchyard at Grasmere, and my companion wove a chaplet of flowers and placed it on the headstone. Afterwards we went into the old church and sat down in the poet's pew. "They are all dead and gone now," sighed the gray-headed sexton; "but I can remember when the seats used to be filled by the family from Rydal Mount. Now they are all outside there in yon grass."