FARRERS OF BUDGE-ROW. CHAPTER I. BUDGE-ROW AGAIN! “Pray open the window, Morgan,” said Jane Farrer to the old servant who was assisting her to arrange for tea the room in which the family had dined. “Perhaps you don’t know, Ma’am, what a cutting wind it is. More like December than March, Miss Jane; bitter enough to help on your rheumatism, my dear.” And Morgan paused, with her hand on the sash. Miss Farrer chose that the room should be refreshed. She was aware that the scents from the shop were at all times strong enough for the nerves of any one unaccustomed to the atmosphere she lived in; and she did not wish that her brother Henry should have to encounter in addition those which the dinner had left behind. She tied a handkerchief over her head while the March wind blew in chilly, and Morgan applied herself to light the fire. When the dinner-table was set back against the wall, and the small Pembroke table brought forward, and the sofa, with its brown cotton cover, wheeled round, and the two candlesticks, with whole candles in them, placed in front of the tea-tray, Miss Farrer thought she would go up into Henry’s room, and see that all was right there, before she put off her black stuff apron, and turned down the cuffs of her gown, and took her seat beside the fire. She tried to look at everything with the eyes she fancied her young brother would bring from the university. She, who had lived for five-and-thirty years in this very house, at the corner of Budge Row, among this very furniture, could not reasonably expect to view either the one or the other as it would appear to a youth of two-and-twenty, who had lived in a far different scene, and among such companions as Jane had no idea of. It was some vague notion of this improbability that made her linger about Henry’s little apartment, and wonder whether he would think she ought to have put up a stuff curtain before the window, and whether he had been accustomed to a bit of carpet, and whether the soap out of her father’s shop was such as he could use. Then came the odd mixture of feelings,—that her father’s youngest son ought not to dream of luxuries that his elder brother and sisters had not had,—and yet that Henry was a scholar and a gentleman, and therefore unavoidably held in awe by the family. When she reverted to the time, well remembered, when she upheld the little fellow, and coaxed him to set one tiny plump foot before the other, the idea of being now half afraid to receive him made her smile and then sigh, and hope that good might come of her father’s ambition to give a son of his a university education. Before she had finished making herself as neat as usual, and rather more dressed, she heard, amidst all the noises that came in from the narrow bustling street, her own name called from the bottom of the stairs.