“Mother! mother! come and help Jack! Charlie is dead, we are afraid,” cried Fairy, standing on the threshold, her great eyes open wider than ever, and her pale cheeks testifying there was at any rate some truth in her words.
Mrs. Shelley was not a nervous woman, and she did not for a moment believe Charlie was killed, though she rose immediately to go and see what was the matter.
“Killed; nonsense, he has fainted, I suppose. Where is he? What has happened?” she asked, as she followed Fairy.
“By the gate. Jack wants you to help to carry him indoors; he is insensible.”
“Insensible! What has made him insensible? How did it all happen?”
“I don’t know, it was all so quick. Charlie wanted me to dance with him, and Jack was angry because his lamb is dead, and he hit Charlie with his crook, and somehow Charlie fell and knocked his head against the stone gate-post,” said Fairy.
They were close to Charlie and Jack, and Mrs. Shelley saw at a glance it was a more serious matter than she had at first supposed, and having, like Jack, a quick imagination, as well as a quick temper, she guessed what had prompted Jack to raise his hand against his brother, and, for the first time in her life, she turned and spoke unkindly to Fairy.
“Go out of my sight; it is all your fault; but for you there would never have been strife between my boys. Fool that I was to take you in, when something warned me, even then, it would lead to no good. Oh! Jack, Jack, my son, my son, what are we to do?”
Even then, in the first flow of her grief, Mrs. Shelley’s sympathy seemed to be for her darling son who had struck the unlucky blow, and not for the poor boy stretched lifeless, to all appearance, on the ground.
“Get him indoors first, mother, and then I will run to Lewes for the doctor. If you will take his feet, we can easily manage him.”