“O, the lady must have been so glad to get to heaven!” exclaimed little Alice.

“Grandfather, what became of Mr. Johnson?” asked Clara.

“His heart appears to have been quite broken,” answered Grandfather; “for he died at Boston within a month after the death of his wife.  He was buried in the very same tract of ground, where he had intended to build a dwelling for Lady Arbella and himself.  Where their house would have stood there was his grave.

“I never heard any thing so melancholy!” said Clara.

“The people loved and respected Mr. Johnson so much,” continued Grandfather, “that it was the last request of many of them, when they died, that they might be buried as near as possible to this good man’s grave.  And so the field became the first burial-ground in Boston.  When you pass through Tremont street, along by King’s Chapel, you see a burial-ground, containing many old grave-stones and monuments.  That was Mr. Johnson’s field.”

“How sad is the thought,” observed Clara, “that one of the first things which the settlers had to do, when they came to the new world, was to set apart a burial-ground!”

“Perhaps,” said Laurence, “if they had found no need of burial-grounds here, they would have been glad, after a few years, to go back to England.”

Grandfather looked at Laurence, to discover whether he knew how profound and true a thing he had said.

Chapter III

Not long after Grandfather had told the story of his great chair, there chanced to be a rainy day.  Our friend Charley, after disturbing the household with beat of drum and riotous shouts, races up and down the staircase, overturning of chairs, and much other uproar, began to feel the quiet and confinement within doors intolerable.  But as the rain came down in a flood, the little fellow was hopelessly a prisoner, and now stood with sullen aspect at a window, wondering whether the sun itself were not extinguished by so much moisture in the sky.

Charley had already exhausted the less eager activity of the other children; and they had betaken themselves to occupations that did not admit of his companionship.  Laurence sat in a recess near the book-case, reading, not for the first time, the Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Clara was making a rosary of beads for a little figure of a Sister of Charity, who was to attend the Bunker Hill Fair, and lend her aid in erecting the Monument.  Little Alice sat on Grandfather’s foot-stool, with a picture-book in her hand; and, for every picture, the child was telling Grandfather a story.  She did not read from the book, (for little Alice had not much skill in reading,) but told the story out of her own heart and mind.

Charley was too big a boy, of course, to care any thing about little Alice’s stories, although Grandfather appeared to listen with a good deal of interest.  Often, in a young child’s ideas and fancies, there is something which it requires the thought of a lifetime to comprehend.  But Charley was of opinion, that if a story must be told, it had better be told by Grandfather, than little Alice.