While the man rolled up the parcel, Miss Somers asked him many questions about Susan, and he was only too glad to be able to tell what he knew about the good girl.

“No later than last May morning,” he said, “Susan acted as it will please you to hear.  She was to have been Queen of the May, which among the children in our village is a thing a good deal thought of.  But Susan’s mother was ill, and Susan, after being up with her all night, would not go out in the morning, even when they brought the crown to her.  She put it upon my daughter Rose’s head with her own hands, and to be sure Rose loves her as well as if she were her own sister.  If I praise Susan it is not that I am any relation of the Prices, but just that I wish her well, as does every one that knows her.  I’ll send the parcel up to the Abbey, shall I, ma’am?”

“If you please,” said Miss Somers, “and as soon as your new goods come in, let us know.  You will, I hope, find us good customers and well-wishers,” she added, with a smile, “for those who wish others well surely deserve to have well-wishers themselves.”

But to return to Susan.  When she left the shop she carefully put the bright guinea into the purse with the twelve shillings her little friends had given her on Mayday.  She next added, as far as she could remember them, the bills for bread that were owing to her, and found they came to about thirty-eight shillings.  Then she hoped that by some means or other she might, during the week her father was to remain at home, make up the nine guineas that would enable him to stay with them altogether.  “If that could but be,” she said to herself, “how happy it would make my mother!  She is already a great deal better since I told her my father would stay for a week longer.  Ah! but she would not have blessed Attorney Case, if she had known about my poor Daisy.”  Susan had now reached the path that led to the meadow by the river-side.  She wanted to go there alone and take leave of her lamb.  But her little brothers, who were watching for her return, ran after her as soon as they saw her and overtook her as she reached the meadow.

“What did that good lady want with you?” cried William; but looking up in his sister’s face, he saw tears in her eyes, and he was silent and walked on quietly.  Susan saw her lamb by the water-side.

“Who are those two men?” said William.  “What are they going to do with Daisy?”

The two men were Attorney Case and the butcher.  The butcher was feeling whether the lamb was fat.

Susan sat down upon the bank in silent sorrow.  Her little brothers ran up to the butcher and asked whether he was going to do any harm to the lamb.  The butcher did not answer, but the Attorney replied, “It is not your sister’s lamb any longer; it’s mine.”

“Yours!” cried the children with terror; “and will you kill it?”

“No, that is what the butcher will do.”

The little boys now burst into loud cries.  They pushed away the butcher’s hand; they threw their arms round the neck of the lamb; they kissed its forehead.  It bleated.  “It will not bleat to-morrow!” said William, and he wept bitterly.