On ordinary Sundays the Byasses breakfasted at ten o’clock; this morning the meal was ready at eight, and Bessie’s boisterous spirits declared the exception to be of joyous significance.  Finding that Samuel’s repeated promises to rise were the merest evasion, she rushed into the room where he lay fly-fretted, dragged the pillows from under his tousled head, and so belaboured him in schoolboy fashion that he had no choice but to leap towards his garments.  In five minutes he roared down the kitchen-stairs for shaving-water, and in five minutes more was seated in his shirt-sleeves, consuming fried bacon with prodigious appetite.  Bessie had the twofold occupation of waiting upon him and finishing the toilet of the baby; she talked incessantly and laughed with an echoing shrillness which would have given a headache for the rest of the day to any one of average nervous sensibility.

They were going to visit Samuel’s parents, who lived at Greenwich.  Bessie had not yet enjoyed an opportunity of exhibiting her first-born to the worthy couple; she had, however, written many and long letters on the engrossing subject, and was just a little fluttered with natural anxiety lest the infant’s appearance or demeanour should disappoint the expectations she had excited.  Samuel found his delight in foretelling the direst calamities.

‘Don’t say I didn’t advise you to draw it mild,’ he remarked whilst breakfasting, when Bessie had for the tenth time obliged him to look round and give his opinion on points of costume.  ’Remember it was only last week you told them that the imp had never cried since the day of his birth, and I’ll bet you three half-crowns to a bad halfpenny he roars all through to. night.’

‘Hold your tongue, Sam, or I’ll throw something at you!’

Samuel had just appeased his morning hunger, and was declaring that the day promised to be the hottest of the year, such a day as would bring out every vice inherent in babies, when a very light tap at the door caused Bessie to abandon her intention of pulling his ears.

‘That’s Jane,’ she said.  ‘Come in!’

The Jane who presented herself was so strangely unlike her namesake who lay ill at Mrs. Peckover’s four months ago, that one who had not seen her in the interval would with difficulty have recognised her.  To begin with, she had grown a little; only a little, but enough to give her the appearance of her full thirteen years.  Then her hair no longer straggled in neglect, but was brushed very smoothly back from her forehead, and behind was plaited in a coil of perfect neatness; one could see now that it was soft, fine, mouse-coloured hair, such as would tempt the fingers to the lightest caress.  No longer were her limbs huddled over with a few shapeless rags; she wore a full-length dress of quiet grey, which suited well with her hair and the pale tones of her complexion.  As for her face—­oh yes, it was still the good, simple, unremarkable countenance, with the delicate arched eyebrows, with the diffident lips, with the cheeks of exquisite smoothness, but so sadly thin.