a vision of the terrible scenes of a plague-stricken land, that she had more than once seen for herself, passed before her.  “We had little cause to rejoice in the times of peace when they came.  It would have seemed less terrible for him to be killed on the battlefield.  Still—­it was on the battlefield of duty.  My boy, my own good boy!  No wonder she could not live without him—­poor, gentle little Lavinia, almost a child herself.  Though if she had been but a little stronger,—­if she could but have breasted the storm of sorrow till her youth came back again to her a little in the pleasure of watching these dear babies improving as they did,—­she might have been a great comfort to us, and she would have found work to do which would have kept her from over-grieving.  Poor Lavinia!  How well I remember the evening they arrived—­she and the two poor yellow shrivelled-up looking little creatures.  I remember, sad at heart as we were—­only two months after the bitter news of my boy’s death!—­Nurse and I could almost have found it in our hearts to laugh when the ayah unwrapped them for us to see.  They were so like two miserable little unfledged birds!  And poor Lavinia so proud of them, through her tears—­what did she know of babies, poor dear?—­and looking so anxiously to see what we thought of them.  I could not say they were pretty—­Duke’s children though they were.”  And a queer little sound—­half laugh, half sob—­escaped from Grandmamma at the recollection.  But it did not matter—­Grandpapa was too deaf to hear.  So she dried her eyes again quietly with her fine lavender-scented cambric pocket-handkerchief, and went on with her recollections all to herself.  She seemed to see the two tiny creatures gradually—­very gradually—­growing plump and rosy in the sweet fresh English air, the look of unnatural old age that one sometimes sees in very delicate babies by degrees fading away as the thin little faces grew round and even dimpled; then came the recollection of the first toddling walk, when the two kept tumbling against each other, so that even the sad-eyed young widow could not help laughing; the first lisping words, which, alas, might not be the sweet baby names for father or mother—­for by that time poor Lavinia had faded out of life, with words of whispered love and thankfulness to the grandparents so willing to do their utmost.  But it was a sad little story at best, and even Grandmamma’s brave old heart trembled when she thought that it might come to be sadder still.

“What would become of them if they were left quite alone in the world,” she could not help saying to herself.  “And though I am not so old as my dear husband by ten years, I cannot picture myself finding strength to live without him, nor would a poor old woman like me be much good to the young creatures if I did!  But one must not lose courage, nor grieve about troubles before they come.  For, after all, who would ever have believed these two poor fledglings would grow up to be two bonnie bairnies like Marmaduke and Pamela now!”