Mrs. Winter slowly plunged her hand into one of the neat glass jars which, carefully labelled with their various contents, adorned the front of her window.
Mrs. Winter was a pattern of neatness, even to precision, her cap was ever of faultless white, her panes were as clean as hands could make them, not a crumb was ever suffered to rest on her counter, and her name over the door shone in bright gilt letters that might have been worthy of a shop in London. Precise and formal as some people deemed her, Mrs. Winter was a kind-hearted woman, too; much warm feeling lay under a stiff, cold manner; combined with a large share of good common sense. She had never been blessed with children, and her husband, though in some respects a worthy, honest man, kept his hands so tightly over his purse strings, as to gain for the couple a character of penuriousness, which was undeserved by his wife. Notwithstanding this, many were the stale loaves which found their way to some poor man's home, and many were the nights which Mrs. Winter had given to watching the sick-bed of a neighbour.
While the baker's wife was drawing forth the biscuits, Goldie entered into conversation with the little girl.
"So you're going to have a treat for once in a way, Nelly Viner. You don't trouble Mrs. Winter often for sweet biscuits, I should say."
"My new brother is coming home to-day," replied the child with a beaming look of pleasure.
"Your new brother! Who's he?"
"I do not exactly know, sir; but he is some one that we are to love, and be kind to. I shall be so glad to have a brother!"
"I should have thought," said Goldie in a careless manner, "that Viner had enough to do to look after his own without adopting the children of other people. Do you know who this boy is, Mrs. Winter?"
"I know that his name is Walter Binning; the son, I suppose, of some friend."
"A friend! Never were you more mistaken in your life. Why, that's the name of the man who almost ruined Viner—a heartless, unprincipled—"