"These careless days, these days of young and comparatively thoughtless happiness, were suddenly finished in a very sad and awful way.
"I will not enter into many particulars of that affair, because it will give you pain. In a few words it was this: Late one evening, in the summer, little Francis Barr was playing in the road, when a carriage, coming along at a full gallop, the horses having taken fright and thrown the postillion, came suddenly upon the poor child, knocked him down, and killed him on the spot. There was no time to send the news to the great house; and, as it happened, Evelyn and Fanny went the next morning, before breakfast, to give the little boy his lesson. When arrived at the lodge, they found the door open and no one within. Mrs. Simpson had just gone into the garden to fetch more flowers to lay over the little boy. Not seeing anyone in the kitchen, they walked into the parlour, and
there poor Evelyn saw her little loved one cold, yet beautiful, in death, having one small hand closed upon a lily, and the other on a rose.
"Evelyn could not mistake the aspect of death; she uttered a wild shriek, and fell senseless to the floor. She was carried home, but she was very ill for many days; and I may truly say never perfectly recovered from that time.
"But now, my dear children," added grandmamma, "I begin to feel tired, and have only finished half my story; if all is well, we will come here to-morrow, and then I shall hope to finish it."
"I wish it was to-morrow," said Henry: and his sisters joined in the wish.
"To hang flowers round its neck."—[Page 435].
