d her picture to be drawn with the lamb."

"Poor little girl!" said Lucy; "all her riches could not buy her
another papa and mamma. But what became of her then, grandmamma?"

"She was taken," added the old lady, "to live under the care of her
aunts, at the curious old house I spoke of as being close at the end of
the town of Reading; and she desired to bring nothing with her but the
pet lamb, which, by this time, was getting on to be as big as a sheep,
though it still knew her, and would eat out of her hand, and would
frisk about her.

"The four Mistresses Vaughan were at the very head and top of formal
and fashionable people. As far as ever I knew them, and I knew them
very well at one time, they were all form, and ceremony, and outside
show, in whatever they did, until they were far, very far advanced in
years, and had been made, through many losses and sorrows, to feel the
emptiness of all worldly things. But I have reason to hope that the
eyes of some of them were then opened to think and hope for better
things than this life can give; but I shall speak of them as they were
when Evelyn was under their care, and when I was acquainted well with
them.

"The entrance to the house where they lived was through heavy stone
gates, which have long since been removed; and along an avenue formed
by double rows of trees, many of which are now gone.

"I have often, when a little child, been taken by my nurse to walk in
that avenue; and I thought it so very long, that had I not seen it
since, I could have fancied it was miles in length."

"That is just like me, grandmamma," said Henry; "when I was a little
boy, I used to think that the walk through Mary Bush's wood was miles
and miles long."

"And so did I," added Emily; and then the story went on.

"At the farthest end of this avenue," continued grandmamma, "the ground
began to slope downwards, and then the house began to appear, but so
hidden by tall dark cypress-trees, and hedges, and _walls_, I may call
them, of yew and box and hornbeam, all cut in curious forms and shapes,
that one could only here and there see a gable, or a window, or door,
but in no place the whole of the front. The house had been built many,
many years before, and it was a curious wild place both within and
without, though immensely large. The way up to the door of the
principal hall was by a double flight of stone steps, surmounted with
huge carved balustrades. Nothing could, however, be seen fr