CHAPTER XIII.
WORK.
On the following Sunday afternoon Emmie was sitting alone by the drawing-room window, with a devotional book in her hand, but her eyes resting on the fading glories of the woodland landscape, and her thoughts on her childhood’s home, when she was joined by her brother Bruce.
“I am glad to find you alone,” said Bruce, as he took a seat by his sister’s side; “I want to consult you, I need your help.”
Such words from the lips of the speaker were gratifying to Emmie; Bruce was ever more ready to give help than to ask it. Emmie closed her book, put it down, and was at once all attention.
“I have been making a little chart of the estate,” said Bruce, unrolling a paper which he placed before his sister.
“What are those square marks on it?” inquired Emmie, looking with interest at the neatly executed chart.
“These are cottages,—some larger, some smaller,” was the reply. “Those buildings marked in red are public-houses; those in green are farms. You observe that there is not a church or a school in the place; there is not one nearer than S——.”
“More’s the pity!” said Emmie.
“If you count, you will find that there are eighty-seven tenements of various kinds, and the dwellers in them are, of course, all tenants of our father. Give five individuals to each family, and you have four hundred and thirty-five souls on this estate, without a resident clergyman.”