a profession had
slumbered; but with the prospect of her speedy debut, it broke out again
very fiercely.

Old Miss Horner had died soon after her letter of protest against the
dancing notion, and Miss Mary was left alone in Carminia House--in
isolated survival, a pathetic more than a severe figure. However, she
ventured to pay a visit to her niece in order to present a final
remonstrance, but she lacked the power of her two elder sisters. What
they commanded, she besought. What they declared, she hinted. Mrs.
Raeburn felt quite sorry for the poor old thing, as she nodded on about
salvation and temptation and the wages of sin. Old Miss Horner used to
be able to wing her platitudes with the flame of God's wrath, but Miss
Mary let them appear as the leaden things they really were. She made no
impression but that of her own loneliness, went back to Carminia House
after declining a slice of cherry cake, and died shortly afterwards, to
the great comfort of the Primitive Methodists of Sion Chapel, who gained
velvet cushions for the pews in consequence, and became less primitive
than ever.

Mrs. Raeburn could not help speculating for an hour or two upon the
course of Jenny's life if she had accepted her aunts' offer, but went to
sleep at the end of it thinking, anyway, it would be all the same a
hundred years hence.

Mrs. Purkiss came and registered a vow never to come again if Jenny
really went; but she had registered so many vows in her sister's hearing
that Mrs. Raeburn had come to regard them with something of that
familiarity which must ultimately dull the surprise of a Commissioner
for Oaths, and treated them as a matter of course.

Uncle James Threadgale, with face as pale and square as ever, but with
hair slightly damper and thinner, suggested that Jenny should come down
to Galton for a bit and think it over. This offer being pleasantly
declined, he gave her a roll of blue serge and asked a blessing on the
undertaking.

Charlie, having found that he was easily able to keep all knowledge of
his daughter's lapse into publicity from his fellow-workmen at the shop
in Kentish Town, decided to celebrate her imminent departure to the
boreal pole (Glasgow soon achieved a glacial topography in Hagworth
Street), by giving a grand supper-party.

"We'll have old Vergoe and Madame Neverseenher"--his witty periphrasis
for Aldavini--"and a brother of mine you've none of you never seen
either, a rare comic, or he used to be, th