The day that followed the unlooked-for visit of my brother Jason to the mill my father spent in bed. When, in the morning, I took him up his breakfast, I could not help noticing that the broad light flooding the room emphasized a change in him that I had been only partly conscious of the evening before. It was as if, during the night, the last gleams of his old restless spirit had died out. I thought all edges in him blunted--the edges of fear, of memory, of observation, of general interest in life. The immediate cause of this decline was, with little doubt, the shock caused by my brother’s unexpected return. To this I never again heard him allude, but none the less had the last of his constitution succumbed to it, I feel sure. The midday post brought me a letter, the sight of which sent a thrill through me. I knew Zyp’s queer crooked hand, that no dignity of years could improve from its immature schoolgirl character. She wrote: “Dear Renny: Jason told you all, I suppose. We are back again, and dependant on dad’s bounty, and yours. Oh, Renny, it goes to my heart to have to wurry you once more. But we are in soar strates, and so hampered in looking for work from the risk of coming across him again. At present he hasn’t found us out, I think, but any day he may do so. If you could send us ever so little it would help us to tide over a terruble crisus. The little one is wanting dainties, Renny; and we--it is hard to say it--bread sometimes. But she will only eat of the best, and chocalats she loves. I wish you could see her. She is my own fairy. I work the prettiest flowers into samplers, and try to sell them in the shops; but I am not very clever with my needel; and Jason laughs at them, though my feet ake with walking over these endless paving stones. Renny, dear, I must be a beggar, please. Don’t think hardly of me for it, but my darling that’s so pretty and frale! Oh, Renny, help us. Your loving sister, Zyp.” “What you send, if annything, please send it to me. That’s why I write for the chief part. Jason would give us his last crust; but--you saw him, Renny, and must know.” I bowed my head over the queer, sorrowful little note. That this bold, reliant child of nature should come to this! There and then I vowed that, so long as I had a shilling I could call my own, Zyp should share it with me, at a word from her. I wrote to her to this effect. I placed my whole position before her and bade her command me as she listed; only bearing in mind that my father, old and broken, had the first claim upon me. Then I went out and bought the largest and most fascinating box of chocolates I could secure, and sent it to her as a present to my little unknown niece, and forwarded also under cover the order for the £10.