“I wonder where Mrs. Peyton can be coming from in her best dress?” she remarked, forgetting Jane for an instant while her sense of tragedy yielded to the keener impulse of curiosity.

“She never goes anywhere but to church or to the Old Ladies’ home,” replied Gabriella.  “Arthur says she hasn’t paid a call since her husband’s death.”

“Well, I haven’t made one, except of course to my relatives, for fifteen years,” rejoined Mrs. Carr a trifle tartly.  Then her manner lost its unusual asperity, and she added excitedly, “They’re coming now, Jane.  There’s Cousin Jimmy and he’s bringing Cousin Pussy and Uncle Meriweather!”

“Oh, mother, I can’t possibly see them!  I feel as if it would kill me!” cried Jane in desperation.

“Give her the camphor, mother,” said Gabriella with grim humour as she went to open the door.

“Brace yourself, my darling.  They are coming,” pleaded Mrs. Carr, as she slipped her arm under Jane’s head.  At the first hint of any excitement she invariably lost her presence of mind and became distracted; and Jane’s hysterical outbursts never failed to convince her, though they usually left the more skeptical Gabriella unmoved.  “Don’t you think you would feel better if you lay back on the pillows?” she urged.

Then the bell rang, and before Jane could swallow her sobs, her sister ushered in Jimmy and Pussy Wrenn, who were closely followed by the ponderous figure of Uncle Meriweather, a gouty but benign old gentleman, whose jet-black eyebrows and white imperial gave him a misleading military air.

“Well, well, my dear, what’s this I hear about Charley?” demanded Cousin Jimmy, whose sprightly manner was never sprightlier than in the hour of tragedy or the house of mourning.  “What does he mean by letting you run away from him?”

“I’ve done my duty by Charley.  I’ve never, never failed in my duty!” wept Jane, breaking down on Pussy’s tender bosom, and waking the sleeping baby.

“We know, darling, we know,” said Pussy, patting Jane’s shoulder, while Jimmy drew a white silk handkerchief from his pocket, and hid his face under the pretence of blowing his nose.

To see a woman cry never failed to wring a sympathetic tear from Jimmy.  Though he was a man of hard common sense, possessed of an inflexible determination to make money, there was a soft spot inside of him which was reached only by the distress of one of the opposite sex.  The suffering—­particularly the financial suffering—­of men left him unmoved.  He could foreclose a mortgage or press a debt (as long as the debtor’s wife or daughter did not appeal to him) as well as another; but the instant a skirt fluttered on the horizon that soft something inside of him appeared, as he expressed it, “to give way.”  Apart from their afflictions, he had an eye, he used to boast, for but one woman in the world, and she, thank God, was his wife.  Handsome, portly, full-blooded, and slightly overfed, he had let Pussy twine him about her little finger ever since the afternoon when he had first seen her, small, trim, and with “a way with her,” at the age of six.