tidy it up before John Backhouse wanted to put it on the cart.  So Olly and Charlie went off to their corner, and for a little while all the other children played there too.  Milly had invented a game called the “Babes in the Wood,” in which two children were the babes and pretended to die on the grass, and all the rest were the robins, and covered them up with hay instead of leaves.  She and Tiza made beautiful babes:  they put their handkerchiefs over their faces and lay as still as mice, till Olly had piled so much hay on the top of them that there was not a bit of them to be seen anywhere, while Bessie began to cry out as if she was suffocated before they had put two good armfuls over her.

Presently, however, Milly got tired; and she and Tiza walked off by themselves and sat down by the river to get cool.  The water in the river was quite low again now, and the children could watch the tiny minnows darting and flashing about by the bank, and even amuse themselves by fancying every now and then that they saw a trout shooting across the clear brown water.  Tiza had quite left off being shy now with Milly, and the two chattered away, Milly telling Tiza all about her school, and Jacky and Francis, and Spot and the garden at home; and Tiza telling Milly about her father’s new bull, how frightened she and Becky were of him, and how father meant to make the fence stronger for fear he should get out and toss people.

“What a happy little party,” said Aunt Emma to mother looking round the field; “there’s nothing like hay for children.”

By this time the hay-cart was quite full, and crack went John Backhouse’s whip, as he took hold of the first horse’s head and gave him a pull forward to start the cart on its way to the farm.

“Gee-up,” shouted John in his loud cheery voice, and the horse made a step forward, while the children round cried “Hurrah!” and waved their hands.  But suddenly there was a loud piteous cry which made John give the horse a sudden push back and drop his whip, and then, from where they sat, Milly and Tiza heard a sound of crying and screaming, while everybody in the field ran toward the hay-cart.  They ran too; what could have happened?

Just as they came up to the crowd of people round the cart, Milly saw her father with something in his arms.  And this something was Becky—­poor little Becky, with a great mark on her temple, and her eyes quite shut, and such a white face!

“Oh, mother! mother!” cried Milly, rushing up to her, “tell me, mother, what is the matter with Becky?”

But Mrs. Norton had no time to attend to her.  She was running to meet Mrs. Backhouse, who had come hurrying up from another part of the field with the baby in her arms.

“She was under the cart when it moved on,” said Mrs. Norton, taking the baby from her.  “We none of us know how it happened.  She must have been trying to hand up some hay at the last moment and tumbled under.  I don’t think her head is much hurt.”