omeone
were to carry away the old tombs they had lately seen at the
Abbey,[336-4] and stick them up in Lady C.'s[336-5] tawdry gilt
drawing-room. Here John smiled, as much as to say, "that would be
foolish indeed."

And then I told how, when she came to die, her funeral was attended by a
concourse of all the poor, and some of the gentry, too, of the
neighborhood for many miles around, to show their respect for her
memory, because she had been such a good and religious woman; so good
indeed that she knew all the Psaltery[336-7] by heart, ay, and a great
part of the Testament[336-8] besides.

Here little Alice spread her hands.

Then I told what a tall, upright, gracious person their
great-grandmother Field once was; and how in her youth she was esteemed
the best dancer,--here Alice's little right foot played an involuntary
movement, till, upon my looking grave, it desisted,--the best dancer, I
was saying, in the country, till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came,
and bowed her down with pain, but it could never bend her good spirits,
or make them stoop, but they were still upright, because she was so good
and religious.

Then I told how she used to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the
great lone house; and how she believed that an apparition of two infants
was to be seen at midnight gliding up and down the great staircase near
where she slept, but she said "those innocents would do her no harm;"
and how frightened I used to be, though in those days I had my maid to
sleep with me, because I was never half so good or religious as
she,--and yet I never saw the infants.

Here John expanded all his eyebrows and tried to look courageous.

Then I told how good she was to all her grandchildren, having us to the
great house in the holidays, where I in particular used to spend many
hours by myself, in gazing upon the old busts of the twelve Caesars,
that had been Emperors of Rome, till the old marble heads would seem to
live again, or I to be turned into marble with them; how I never could
be tired with roaming about that huge mansion, with its vast empty
rooms, with their worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, and carved
oaken panels, with the gilding almost rubbed out,--sometimes in the
spacious old-fashioned gardens, which I had almost to myself, unless
when now and then a solitary gardening man would cross me,--and how the
nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls,[338-9] without my ever
offering to pluck them