Last Words: A Final Collection of StoriesEwing, Juliana Horatia
General
Last Words: A Final Collection of Stories
Ewing, Juliana Horatia
Children's stories; Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction
I do not know how I bore parting with her, except with hoping that she
would enjoy herself, for she always had wanted so very much to have a
journey to go. But if she had been at home, so that I could have taken
her advice, I do not think I should have been so silly about the
Sunflowers and the Rushlight.
She says--"You'd have put on your slippers, and had a blanket round
you at least. But, oh, my dear Grace, you always are so rash!"
I did not know I was. I thought rash people were brave; and if I had
been brave, the Rushlight would never have come out of the roof. Still
Margery is sure to be right. I know I am very foolish and lonely
without her.
There are only two of us. Our father, and our mother, and our brother,
all died of fever, nearly five years ago. We shall never see them
again till we go to Paradise, and that is one reason why we wish to
try to be good and never to be naughty, so that we may be sure to see
them again.
I remember them a little. I remember being frightened by sitting so
high up on my father's shoulder, and then feeling so safe when I got
into my mother's lap; and I remember Robin's curls, and his taking my
woolly ball from me. I remember our black frocks coming in the
hair-trunk with brass nails to the sea-side, where Margery and I were
with our nurse, and her telling the landlady that our father and
mother and brother were all laid in one grave. And I remember going
home, and seeing the stone flags up in the yard, and a deep dark hole
near the pump, and thinking that was the grave; and how Margery found
me stark with fright, and knew better, and told me that the grave was
in the church-yard, and that this hole was only where workmen had been
digging for drains.
And then never seeing those three, day after day, and having to do
without them ever since!
But Margery remembers a good deal more (she is three years older than
I am). She remembers things people said, and the funeral sermon, and
the books being moved into the attic, and she remembers Grandmamma's
quarrel with Dr. Brown.
She says she was sitting behind the parlor curtains with Mrs.
Trimmer's Roman History, and Grandmamma was sitting, looking very
grave in her new black dress, with a pocket handkerchief and book in
her lap, and sherry and sponge biscuits on a tray on the piano, for
visitors of condolence, when Dr. Brown came in, looking very grave
too, and took off one of his black gloves and shook hands. Then he
took off the other, and put them both into his hat, and had a glass
of sherry and a sponge biscuit, so Margery knew that he was a visitor
of condolence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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