"We do not live in the same house with these persons last mentioned," answered Mrs. Fairchild, "and therefore they would not miss us as those would do with whom we may reside; we must help them at a distance. If you, Lucy and Emily, have more money given you now, you must save it for these poor dear people. Kind Mrs. Burke will divide it amongst them as they want it; and she will look after the school."
"Oh, Emily!" said Lucy, "we will save all we can."
Emily could not speak, but she put her hand in Lucy's, and Lucy knew what that meant.
Who could think of lessons such a day as this? As soon as breakfast was over, Henry ran to talk to John about all that he heard: and Lucy and Emily, with their mother's leave, went out into the air to recover themselves before they appeared in the presence of their grandmother. They were afraid of meeting the maid, so they went up to the top of the round hill, and seated themselves in the shade of the beech-trees.
For a little while they looked about them, particularly down on the house and garden and the pleasant fields around them, every corner of which they knew as well as
children always know every nook in the place in which they have spent their early days. They were both shedding tears, and yet trying to hide them from each other. Lucy was the first who spoke.
"Oh, Emily!" she said, "I cannot bear to think of leaving this dear home. Can we ever be so happy again as we have been here?"
The little girls were silent again for some minutes, and then Lucy went on:
"Oh, Emily! how many things I am thinking of! There—don't you see the little path winding through the wood to the hut? How many happy evenings we have had in that hut! Shall we ever have another? And there is the way to Mary Bush's."
"Do you remember the walk we had there with Betty a long time ago?" said Emily.