In what way could wealth be better applied than in surrounding his only child with every luxury that it could purchase? Mr. Bellew was a good master, and paid his hands liberally. No man ever applied to him in vain if help was wanted for any good object, and so, as he was generous to all beside, was he likely to stint where Jeannie was concerned?
The girl had excellent taste in the choice of garments, and did not care for show and glitter. But everything she wore was in exquisite harmony with her youth, and only the initiated would have guessed what a simple morning-robe of muslin and lace had cost her father.
Jack Corry had been in and out at Benvora, Mr. Bellew's place, ever since he could walk. He could remember the day when he, a boy of ten, was first trusted to hold Jeannie, a baby three weeks old, in his arms, and how proud he had felt to kiss her pink cheek, then glad to be rid of so great a responsibility when the nurse reclaimed her charge.
Jack dropped in on the evening of Jeannie's return. He had cheered Mr. Bellew with his sunny presence many a time whilst his wife and daughter were away, and now the older man gave him a hearty welcome.
"Jack is here, Jeannie," he said. "Come to see how you look after your wanderings in foreign lands. He has been my best neighbour during the winter, and has deprived himself of many a pleasure to cheer a lonely man."
Jack deprecated the idea of its being possible for him to have had better or pleasanter evenings than those he had spent at Benvora, and congratulated Jeannie on her restored health, as he took in his, the little plump hand which she promptly extended.
"But you have been good, Jack. Father has told us in nearly every letter about your kindness to him. You don't know how grateful we are, mother and I. Are we not, mother?"
Whilst Jeannie was speaking she was also looking straight into Jack's face and leaving her hand resting in his clasp, as if she had forgotten that it was there.
What wonder that Jack was in no hurry to relinquish it, that he thought Jeannie very charming and winsome, and was conscious of an undercurrent of gladness at the conviction that she had come back unspoiled, the same simple-minded country lassie whom he had always regarded as a dear, loving child-friend of his own?
She positively had tears in her eyes, called thither by the thought of his little attentions to Mr. Bellew. Why, he would have been the most ungrateful monster in existence if he could have neglected the man who had tipped him as a boy, given him his first pony, been his good friend always, and whom, apart from all this, he loved and honoured.