Jane shook her head as she carefully mended the fire, and observed that the times were such as to alarm the wealthiest. While her brother made inquiries about the business, and her share of profit for her toils, she answered with her habitual caution, and made no communication about the increased income which the three members of the family would receive in consequence of the deaths of which she had this afternoon heard. “So you have no idea,” said Henry, “how long I am to remain here, and what I am to do next?” “Ah! indeed I am afraid you will hardly know what to do with your days here, Henry. I have been thinking what can be managed as to that. You see we have no books but the one shelf-full that you have read many times already. And we have no friends; and we dine so early; and the house itself, I am afraid, is the kind of thing you have been little used to. You may speak out to me more than you liked to do to my father.” Henry was looking about him with a half smile, and owned that the slanting glass between the windows did not appear quite so grand a mirror as when he looked up into it fearfully, in his childhood, wondering by what magic the straight floor could be made to look so like a very steep carpeted hill. He then thought that no entertainment could be grander than the new year’s eve, when Mr. Jerry Hill and his brother used to come to drink punch, and were kind enough to take each a boy between his knees. But now, it seemed as if there would be barely room for Mr. Jerry Hill and his brother to turn themselves round in this very same parlour. They would never spend another new year’s eve here! They were dead! How? When? Where? The news only arrived this day! and his father and Michael so merry! Henry could not understand this. “But, Jane, do not trouble your head about what amusement I am to find at home. If it comes to that, I can sit in my old place in the window-seat and read, let the carts clatter and the sashes rattle as they may. What I want to know is how I am to employ myself. I shall not live idly, as you may suppose. I will not accept of food and clothes, to be led about for a show as my father’s learned son that was bred up at the university.” “Certainly not,” said Jane, uneasily. “Perhaps in two or three days something may turn up to settle the matter. I dare say you had rather go back to college than do anything else?” No. Henry now fell into praises of the life of a country clergyman, living in just such a parsonage as he saw at Allansford, when he was staying there with his friend, John Stephens. “Are there any ladies at Mr. Stephens’s?” inquired Jane. “Mrs. Stephens and her daughter, and a friend of Miss Stephens’s. Ah! that is just the kind of settlement that I should like; and how easily my father might, if he would—But, as you say, a few days will show; and I will have patience till then. I cannot conceive what made him send for me, unless he has something in view.” Jane knitted in silence.