hear about their great-grandmother Field, who lived in a great house
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
Redbreasts, till a foolish rich person 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 every
body, though 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 afterwards came to decay,
and was nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments stripped 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 neighbourhood 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,