[Illustration: "_They ran on before._"--Page 7.]
As soon as the children came in sight of Nurse's little cottage they ran on before to kiss Nurse, and to tell her that they were come to spend the day with her. The poor woman was very glad, because she loved Mr. Fairchild's children very dearly; she therefore kissed them, and took them to see her little grandson Tommy, who was asleep in the cradle. By this time Mr. and Mrs. Fairchild and Betty were come up, and whilst Betty prepared the dinner, Mr. and Mrs. Fairchild sat talking with Nurse at the door of the cottage.
Betty and Joan laid the cloth upon the fresh grass before the cottage-door, and when Joan had boiled some potatoes, Mr. and Mrs. Fairchild sat down to dinner with the children, after which the children went to play in the meadow by the brookside till it was time for them to be going home.
"What a happy day we have had!" said Lucy as she walked home between her father and mother. "Everything has gone well with us since we set out, and everyone we have seen has been kind and good to us; and the weather has been so fine, and everything looks so pretty all around us!"
[Illustration: "_Here were abundance of flowers._"--Page 7.]
[Illustration: "I sat down on one of the branches to eat cherries"]
The next morning, when Lucy and Emily were sitting at work with Mrs. Fairchild, Henry came in from his father's study.
"I have finished all my lessons, mamma," he said. "I have made all the haste I could because papa said that you would tell us a story to-day; and now I am come to hear it."
So Henry placed himself before his mother, and Lucy and Emily hearkened, whilst Mrs. Fairchild told her story.
"My mother died," said Mrs. Fairchild, "many years ago, when I was a very little child--so little that I remember nothing more of her than being taken to kiss her when she lay sick in bed. Soon afterwards I can recollect seeing her funeral procession go out of the garden-gate as I stood in the nursery window; and I also remember some days afterwards being taken to strew flowers upon her grave in the village churchyard.
"After my mother's death my father sent me to live with my aunts, Mrs. Grace and Mrs. Penelope, two old ladies, who, having never been married, had no families to take up their attention, and were so kind as to undertake to bring me up. These old ladies lived near the pleasant town of Reading. I fancy I can see the house now, although it is many years since I left it. It was a handsome old mansion, for my aunts were people of good fortune. In the front of it was a shrubbery, neatly laid out with gravel walks, and behind it was a little rising ground, where was an arbour, in which my aunts used to drink tea on a fine afternoon, and where I often went to play with my doll. My aunts' house and garden were very neat; there was not a weed to be seen in the gravel walks or among the shrubs, nor anything out of its place in the house. My aunts themselves were nice and orderly, and went on from day to day in the same manner, and, as far as they knew, they were good women; but they knew very little about religion, and what people do not understand they cannot practise.