The day that followed the unlooked-for visit of my brother Jason to the mill my father spent in bed. When, in the morning, I took him up his breakfast, I could not help noticing that the broad light flooding the room emphasized a change in him that I had been only partly conscious of the evening before. It was as if, during the night, the last gleams of his old restless spirit had died out. I thought all edges in him blunted—the edges of fear, of memory, of observation, of general interest in life.

 

The immediate¹ cause of this decline was, with little doubt, the shock caused by my brother’s unexpected return. To this I never again heard him allude², but none the less had the last of his constitution succumbed³ to it, I feel sure.

 

The midday post brought me a letter, the sight of which sent a thrill through me. I knew Zyp’s queer crooked⁴ hand, that no dignity of years could improve from its immature⁵ schoolgirl character. She wrote:

 

“Dear Renny: Jason told you all, I suppose. We are back again, and dependant⁶ on dad’s bounty⁷, and yours. Oh, Renny, it goes to my heart to have to wurry you once more. But we are in soar strates, and so hampered⁸ in looking for work from the risk of coming across him again. At present he hasn’t found us out, I think, but any day he may do so. If you could send us ever so little it would help us to tide over a terruble crisus. The little one is wanting dainties, Renny; and we—it is hard to say it—bread sometimes. But she will only eat of the best, and chocalats she loves. I wish you could see her. She is my own fairy. I work the prettiest flowers into samplers, and try to sell them in the shops; but I am not very clever with my needel; and Jason laughs at them, though my feet ake with walking over these endless paving stones. Renny, dear, I must be a beggar, please. Don’t think hardly of me for it, but my darling that’s so pretty and frale! Oh, Renny, help us. Your loving sister,

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