ould have seemed less terrible
for him to be killed on the battlefield. Still--it was on the
battlefield of duty. My boy, my own good boy! No wonder she could not
live without him--poor, gentle little Lavinia, almost a child herself.
Though if she had been but a little stronger,--if she could but have
breasted the storm of sorrow till her youth came back again to her a
little in the pleasure of watching these dear babies improving as they
did,--she might have been a great comfort to us, and she would have
found work to do which would have kept her from over-grieving. Poor
Lavinia! How well I remember the evening they arrived--she and the two
poor yellow shrivelled-up looking little creatures. I remember, sad at
heart as we were--only two months after the bitter news of my boy's
death!--Nurse and I could almost have found it in our hearts to laugh
when the ayah unwrapped them for us to see. They were so like two
miserable little unfledged birds! And poor Lavinia so proud of them,
through her tears--what did she know of babies, poor dear?--and looking
so anxiously to see what we thought of them. I _could_ not say they were
pretty--Duke's children though they were." And a queer little
sound--half laugh, half sob--escaped from Grandmamma at the
recollection. But it did not matter--Grandpapa was too deaf to hear. So
she dried her eyes again quietly with her fine lavender-scented cambric
pocket-handkerchief, and went on with her recollections all to herself.
She seemed to see the two tiny creatures gradually--very
gradually--growing plump and rosy in the sweet fresh English air, the
look of unnatural old age that one sometimes sees in very delicate
babies by degrees fading away as the thin little faces grew round and
even dimpled; then came the recollection of the first toddling walk,
when the two kept tumbling against each other, so that even the sad-eyed
young widow could not help laughing; the first lisping words, which,
alas, might not be the sweet baby names for father or mother--for by
that time poor Lavinia had faded out of life, with words of whispered
love and thankfulness to the grandparents so willing to do their utmost.
But it was a sad little story at best, and even Grandmamma's brave old
heart trembled when she thought that it might come to be sadder still.
"What would become of them if they were left _quite_ alone in the
world," she could not help saying to herself. "And though I am not so
old as my dear hus
|