But there was one member of the family who declined to keep herself laid up in lavender, and that was the only daughter, Jane. She came to Crabb Cot of her own accord, and made friends with us; made friends with Mrs. Jacob Chandler and her girls, and with Emma Paul at Islip. She was a fair, lively, open-natured girl, and welcomed everywhere.
Mr. and Mrs. Preen and Jane were seated at the breakfast-table one fine morning in the earliest days of spring. A space of about two years had gone by since they first came to Duck Brook. Breakfast was laid, as usual, in a small flagged room opening from the kitchen. A piece of cold boiled bacon, three eggs, a home-made loaf and a pat of butter were on the table, nothing more luxurious. Mrs. Preen, a thin woman, under the middle height, poured out the coffee. She must once have been very pretty. Her face was fair and smooth still, with a bright rose tint on the cheeks, and a peevish look in her mild blue eyes. Jane’s face was very much like her mother’s, but her blue eyes had no peevishness in them as yet. Poor Mrs. Preen’s life was one of rubs and crosses, had been for a long while, and that generally leaves its marks upon the countenance. When Mr. Preen came in he had a letter in his hand, which he laid beside his plate, address downwards. He looked remarkably cross, and did not speak. No one else spoke. Conversation was seldom indulged in at meal times, unless the master chose to begin it. But in passing something to him, Jane’s eyes chanced to fall on the letter, and saw that it was of thin, foreign paper.
“Papa, is that from Oliver?”
“Don’t you see it is?” returned Mr. Preen.
“And—is anything different decided?” asked Mrs Preen, timidly, as if she were afraid of either the question or the answer.
“What is there different to decide?” he retorted.
“But, Gervais, I thought you wrote to say that he could not come home.”
“And he writes back to say that he must come. I suppose he must. The house over there is being given up; he can’t take up his abode in the street. There’s what he says,” continued Mr. Preen, tossing the letter to the middle of the table for the public benefit. “He will be here to-morrow.”
A glad light flashed into Jane’s countenance. She lifted her handkerchief to hide it.
Oliver Preen was her brother; she and he were the only children. He had been partly adopted by a great aunt, once Miss Emily Preen, the sister of his grandfather. She had married Major Magnus late in life, and was left a widow. Since Oliver left school, three years ago now, he had lived with Mrs. Magnus at Tours, where she had settled down. She was supposed to be well off; and the Preen family—Gervais Preen and all his hungry brothers and sisters—had cherished expectations from her. They thought she might provide slenderly for Oliver, and divide the rest of her riches among them. But a week or two ago she had died after a short illness, and then the amazing fact came out that she had nothing to leave. All Mrs. Magnus once possessed had been sunk in an annuity on her own life.