“The same evening the sisters sent a polite note to Miss Stanton, (to whom they were not entirely unknown,) explaining their motive for requesting her acceptance of the ‘little favourite,’ as they called me. Arthur was the messenger on this occasion. He soon returned with an answer, in which Miss Stanton, after condoling with them on the loss they had sustained, expressed her willingness to receive me; at the same time promising that every attention should be paid to my comfort; for she justly imagined that they had some regard for me, and well knew how to appreciate the motive which induced them to part with an object that had been so dear to their lamented sister. “On the following morning, Arthur was again deputed to convey me to my new residence. The distance was very trifling, and on our arrival a woman-servant ushered us into a little room, where there was a neat book-case, a piano-forte, and other things which gave it the appearance of a study. Here Miss Stanton soon joined us, and receiving me kindly from Arthur, heard, with apparent delight, the catalogue of my various accomplishments. She then dismissed my young conductor, with a present of some handsomely bound books for himself and his sisters, requesting, that whenever they read them they would remember their goldfinch, and feel assured that it would be carefully attended, for their sake as well as its own. “I was greatly pleased with my reception, and the agreeable manners of my new mistress; but still I could not divest myself of the grief I felt for my beloved Sophia, nor of a degree of apprehension on the score of Master William; and I was, in consequence, a prey to melancholy reflections, which rendered me almost insensible to the caresses Miss Stanton lavished on me. My spirits were still more depressed by an event which occurred on the following day. Master William, it seems, had heard of my arrival, and he now sent a little girl to request that his sister would bring me to the drawing-room, as he was not allowed to stir from the sofa. She complied, and was ascending the staircase with me in my cage, when I beheld from a window a sight that made me shudder: it was nothing less than the whole brood of little sparrows, lying dead on the top of a portico. I afterwards learned, that Master William, in his haste to get home, had slipped down and sprained his ancle. The pain this accident caused him, and the bustle it occasioned in the family, united in banishing from his remembrance, and that of his attendant, the wants of his little captives: they were found dead on the following morning, and John carelessly tossed them out of the window.