Hal joyfully accepted the invitation. He was always glad to go out to dine, because it gave him something to do, something to think of, or at least something to say. Besides this, he had been educated to think it was a fine thing to visit fine people; and Lady Diana Sweepstakes (for that was the name of his mother’s acquaintance) was a very fine lady, and her two sons intended to be very great gentlemen. He was in a prodigious hurry when these young gentlemen knocked at his uncle’s door the next day; but just as he got to the hall door, little Patty called to him from the top of the stairs, and told him that he had dropped his pocket-handkerchief. “Pick it up, then, and bring it to me, quick, can’t you, child,” cried Hal, “for Lady Di’s sons are waiting for me?” Little Patty did not know anything about Lady Di’s sons; but as she was very good-natured, and saw that her cousin Hal was, for some reason or other, in a desperate hurry, she ran downstairs as fast as she possibly could towards the landing-place, where the handkerchief lay; but, alas! before she reached the handkerchief, she fell, rolling down a whole flight of stairs, and when her fall was at last stopped by the landing-place, she did not cry out, she writhed, as if she was in great pain. “Where are you hurt, my love?” said Mr. Gresham, who came instantly, on hearing the noise of someone falling downstairs. “Where are you hurt, my dear?” “Here, papa,” said the little girl, touching her ankle, which she had decently covered with her gown. “I believe I am hurt here, but not much,” added she, trying to rise; “only it hurts me when I move.” “I’ll carry you; don’t move then,” said her father, and he took her up in his arms. “My shoe! I’ve lost one of my shoes,” said she. Ben looked for it upon the stairs, and he found it sticking in a loop of whip cord, which was entangled round one of the bannisters. When this cord was drawn forth, it appeared that it was the very same jagged, entangled piece which Hal had pulled off his parcel. He had diverted himself with running up and downstairs, whipping the bannisters with it, as he thought he could convert it to no better use; and, with his usual carelessness, he at last left it hanging just where he happened to throw it when the dinner bell rang. Poor little Patty’s ankle was terribly strained, and Hal reproached himself for his folly, and would have reproached himself longer, perhaps, if Lady Di Sweepstakes’ sons had not hurried him away. In the evening, Patty could not run about as she used to do; but she sat upon the sofa, and she said, that she did not feel the pain of her ankle _so much_, whilst Ben was so good as to play at _jack straws_ with her.