"No," said the doctor, "he is not dead—yet"; with a breath's pause between the two last words. "If some of you will help me to put him on a stretcher, he may be carried home, and I will go with him. There is just a chance for him, poor fellow, and he must have immediate attention. Where does he live?"
"He must go with me," said Grace. "He is my friend."
So they took him up, and Joan stood a little apart and watched them carry him away,—watched the bearers until they were out of sight, and then turned again and joined the women in their work among the sufferers.
By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.
FRANCES BURNEY (MADAME D'ARBLAY)
(1752-1840)
There is a suggestion of the 'Ugly Duckling' story in Fanny Burney's early life. The personality of the shy little girl, who was neither especially pretty nor precocious, was rather merged in the half-dozen of gayer brothers and sisters. The first eight years of her life were passed at Lynn Regis in Norfolk; then the family moved to London, where her father continued his career as an important writer on music and a fashionable music-master. Soon after, Mrs. Burney died. All the children but young Fanny were sent away to school. She was to have been educated at home, but received little attention from the learned, kind, but heedless Dr. Burney, who seems to have considered her the dull member of his flock. "Poor Fanny!" he often said, until her sudden fame overwhelmed him with surprise as well as exultation. Only his friend, her beloved "Daddy Crisp" of the letters, appreciated her; himself a disappointed dramatic author, soured by what he felt to be an incomprehensible failure, yet of fine critical talent, with kind and wise suggestions for his favorite Fanny.