Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No.690

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Various. Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No.690

THE BRITISH NAVY, AS IT WAS

THE LAST OF THE HADDONS

THE GOOD TEMPLARS

PORCELAIN-PAINTING

THE STRONG-MINDED WOMAN

ON WASTE OF LIFE

LION KINGS, QUEENS, AND TRAINERS

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I was saying a few words to the housekeeper, when one of the maids came running in to tell me that Miss Farrar wanted me in the green room immediately. 'I am afraid Miss Farrar is taken suddenly ill, or something serious has happened, Miss; for she could hardly speak, and told me to beg you not to delay a moment.'

Lilian ill! I hastened up-stairs as fast as my feet would carry me. It was the room in which her father had died, and it had been shut up ever since. I had advised her to have it opened and the furniture changed, in order to destroy painful associations; and she had at length yielded to my persuasions. But we decided that she and I were first to give a last look through the cabinet before it was removed, she having resolved to keep that one memento of her father in her own room. She had gone on, and I was only waiting to give some instructions to the housekeeper before following her.

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'But I think you must be mistaken in fancying you were as old as five. You could not have been much over two years and a half, or three – perhaps three,' I pleaded. If what I feared was true, was I not pleading for the good name of Lilian's mother?

'Well, I do think I ought to be allowed to know best about that, Miss Haddon. I am over twenty, and Ma has been dead fifteen years.' Then she added, with what was meant for satire: 'But if I can't be believed about it, there's the register of my birth and Ma's death to be found, I suppose; and it may not be all stories on her tombstone, which I must say Pa spared no expense about. It's in the churchyard at Highgate, where Ma was staying for change of air when she died, if you would like to go and see it.'

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