se
in Norfolk--a hundred times bigger than that in which they and papa
lived--which had been the scene--so at least it was generally believed
in that part of the country--of the tragic incidents which they had
lately become familiar with from the ballad of the Children in the
Wood. Certain it is that the whole story of the children and their
cruel uncle was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the
chimney-piece of the great hall, the whole story down to the Robin
Red-breasts, till a foolish rich uncle pulled it down to set up a
marble one of modern invention in its stead, with no story upon it.
Here Alice put out one of her dear mother's looks, too tender to be
called upbraiding.

Then I went on to say how religious and how good their
great-grandmother Field was, how beloved and respected by everybody,
tho she was not indeed the mistress of this great house, but had only
the charge of it--and yet in some respects she might be said to be the
mistress of it too--committed to her by the owner, who preferred
living in a newer and more fashionable mansion which he had purchased
somewhere in the adjoining county; but still she lived in it in a
manner as if it had been her own, and kept up the dignity of the great
house in a sort while she lived, which afterward came to decay, and
was nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments stript and carried
away to the owner's other house, where they were set up, and looked as
awkward as if some one were to carry away the old tombs they had seen
lately at the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady C.'s tawdry gilt
drawing-room. Here John smiled, as much as to say, "That would be
foolish indeed." And then I told how, when she came to die, her
funeral was attended by a concourse of all the poor, and some of the
gentry too, of the neighborhood for many miles round, to show their
respect for her memory, because she had been such a good and religious
woman; so good, indeed, that she knew all the Psaltery by heart, ay,
and a great part of the Testament besides. Here little Alice spread
her hands.

Then I told what a tall, upright, graceful person their
great-grandmother Field once was; and how in her youth she was
esteemed the best dancer. Here Alice's little right foot played an
involuntary movement, till, upon my looking grave, it desisted--the
best dancer, I was saying, in the county, till a cruel disease, called
a cancer, came, and bowed her down with pain; but it could never bend
her