as they sat together in their
best dresses. As soon as three had arrived, we sat down to Preference,
I being the unlucky fourth. The next four comers were put down
immediately to another table; and presently the tea-trays, which I had
seen set out in the store-room as I passed in the morning, were placed
each on the middle of a card table. The china was delicate egg-shell;
the old-fashioned silver glittered with polishing; but the eatables
were of the slightest description.

While the trays were yet on the tables, Captain and the Miss Browns
came in; and I could see that, somehow or other, the captain was a
favorite with all the ladies present. Ruffled brows were smoothed,
sharp voices lowered at his approach. Miss Brown looked ill, and
depressed almost to gloom. Miss Jessie smiled as usual, and seemed
nearly as popular as her father. He immediately and quietly assumed
the man's place in the room; attended to every one's wants, lessened
the pretty maid-servant's labor by waiting on empty cups and
bread-and-butterless ladies; and yet did it all in so easy and
dignified a manner, and so much as if it were a matter of course for
the strong to attend to the weak, that he was a true man throughout.
He played for threepenny points with as grave an interest as if they
had been pounds; and yet in all his attention to strangers he had an
eye on his suffering daughter--for suffering I was sure she was,
though to many eyes she might only appear to be irritable. Miss Jessie
could not play cards, but she talked to the sitters-out, who before
her coming had been rather inclined to be cross. She sang, too, to an
old cracked piano which I think had been a spinet in its youth. Miss
Jessie sang 'Jock o' Hazeldean' a little out of tune; but we were none
of us musical, though Miss Jenkyns beat time, out of time, by way of
appearing to be so.

It was very good of Miss Jenkyns to do this; for I had seen that, a
little before, she had been a good deal annoyed by Miss Jessie Brown's
unguarded admission (apropos of Shetland wool) that she had an uncle,
her mother's brother, who was a shopkeeper in Edinburgh. Miss
Jenkyns tried to drown this confession by a terrible cough--for the
Honorable Mrs. Jamieson was sitting at the card table nearest Miss
Jessie, and what would she say or think if she found out that she was
in the same room with a shopkeeper's niece! But Miss Jessie Brown (who
had no tact, as we all agreed the next morning) _would_ re