Mr. Gillat rambled on vaguely, but Julia was not slow to guess that the principal reason was to be found in the state of Johnny's finances. She questioned him as to when he had moved into the back room, and, finding it to be not long before her father's departure, guessed that discomfort, like the husks of the prodigal son, had awakened the thing dignified by the name of duty.
For a little she sat in silence, thinking matters over. Johnny smoked hard at the stump of his cigar, mended the fire and fidgeted, looking sideways at her.
"Don't worry about it," he ventured at last; "things'll look up, they will; when he's back at Marbridge with your mother he'll be all right. She always had a great influence over him, she had, indeed."
Julia said "Yes." But he did not feel there was much enthusiasm in the monosyllable, so he cast about in his mind for something to cheer her and thus remembered a very important matter.
"What an old fool I am!" he exclaimed. "There's something I ought to have told you the moment you came in, and I've clean forgotten it until now; it's good news, too! There is a lawyer wants to see you."
"What about?" Julia asked; she did not seem to naturally associate a lawyer with good news.
"A legacy," Johnny answered triumphantly.
Julia was much astonished; she could not imagine from whence it came, but before she asked she made the business-like inquiry, "How much?"
"Not a great deal, I'm afraid," Mr. Gillat was obliged to say; "still, a little's a help, you know; it may be a great help; you remember your father's Aunt Jane?"
Julia did, or rather she remembered the name. Great-aunt Jane was one of the relations the Polkingtons did not use; she was not rich enough or obliging enough to give any help, nor grand enough for conversational purposes. She never figured in Mrs. Polkington's talk except vaguely as "one of my husband's people in Norfolk;" this when she was explaining that the Captain came of East Anglian stock on his mother's side. Jane was only a step-aunt to the Captain; his mother had married above her family, her half-sister Jane had married a little beneath—a small farmer, in fact, whose farming had got smaller still before he died, which was long ago. Great-aunt Jane could not have much to leave any one, but, as Mr. Gillat said, anything was better than nothing; the real surprise was why it should have been left to Julia.