"I hope not, with all my heart," said Aunt Emma, gently taking her arm. "But the doctor will soon be here; we must get her home before he comes." So on they went again, Mr. Norton still carrying Becky, and Mr. Backhouse helping his wife along. Mrs. Norton had got the baby safe in her motherly arms, and so they all toiled up the hill to the farmhouse. What a difference from the merry party that ran down the hill only an hour before! They laid Becky down on her mother's bed, and then Aunt Emma, finding that Mrs. Norton wished to stay till the doctor came, went back to the children. She found a sad little group sitting in the hay-field; Milly in nurse's lap crying quietly every now and then; Tiza still sobbing on the grass, and Olly who had just crept down from the farmhouse, where he and Charlie had seen Becky carried in, talking to nurse in eager whispers, as if he daren't talk out loud. "Oh, Aunt Emma," cried Milly, when she opened the gate, "is she better?" "A little, I think, Milly, but the doctor will soon be here, and then we shall know all about it. Tiza, you poor little woman, Mrs. Wheeler says you must sleep with them to-night. Your mother will want the house very quiet, and to-morrow, you know, you can go and see Becky if the doctor says you may." At this Tiza began to cry again more piteously than ever. It seemed so dreary and terrible to her to be shut out from home without Becky. But Aunt Emma sat down on the grass beside her, and lifted her up and talked to her; with anybody else Tiza would have kicked and struggled, for she was a curious, passionate child, and her grief was always wild and angry, but nobody could struggle with Aunt Emma, and at last she let herself be comforted a little by the tender voice and soft caressing hand. She stopped crying, and then they all took her up to the Wheelers's cottage, where Mrs. Wheeler, a kind motherly body, took her in, and promised that she should know everything there was to be known about Becky. "Aunt Emma," said Milly, presently, when they were all sitting in the conservatory which ran round the house, waiting for Mr. Norton to bring them news from the farm, "how did Becky tumble under the cart?" "She was lifting up some hay, I think, which had fallen off, and one of the men was stooping down to take it on his fork, and then she must have slipped and fallen right under the cart, just as John Backhouse told the horse to go on." "Oh, if the wheel _had_ gone over!" said Milly, shuddering. "Isn't it a sad birthday, Aunt Emma, and we were so happy a little while ago? And then I can't understand. I don't know why it happens like this." "Like what, Milly?" "Why, Aunt Emma, always in stories, you know, it's the bad people get hurt and die. And now it's poor little Becky that's hurt. And she's such a dear little girl, and helps her mother so. I don't think she ought to have been hurt."