ry has been in breeches some months, and
thinks himself near as good a man as his brother
Neddy. Indeed no one would judge by their looks
that there was above three years and a half
difference in their ages, one is so little and the
other so great. Master Van. is got very well
again, and has been with us again these three
months; he is gone home this morning for a few
holidays.

The new infant, however, did not appear quite so soon as was expected,
and the last letter of the series is written by George Austen on
December 17, 1775.

Steventon: December 17, 1775.

DEAR SISTER,--You have doubtless been for some
time in expectation of hearing from Hampshire, and
perhaps wondered a little we were in our old age
grown such bad reckoners, but so it was, for Cassy
certainly expected to have been brought to bed a
month ago; however, last night the time came, and
without a great deal of warning, everything was
soon happily over. We have now another girl, a
present plaything for her sister Cassy, and a
future companion. She is to be Jenny, and seems to
me as if she would be as like Harry as Cassy is to
Neddy. Your sister, thank God, is pure well after
it.

George Austen's prediction was fully justified. Never were sisters more
to each other than Cassandra and Jane; while in a particularly
affectionate family there seems to have been a special link between
Cassandra and Edward on the one hand, and between Jane and Henry on the
other.

Jane's godparents were Mrs. Musgrave (a connexion of her mother's), Mrs.
Francis Austen (another Jane), wife of George's kind uncle, and Samuel
Cooke, Rector of Little Bookham. We may suppose that, like the rest of
her family, she spent a considerable part of the first eighteen months
of her existence at the good woman's at Deane.

We have, indeed, but little information about the household at Steventon
for the next few years. Another child--the last--Charles, was born in
June 1779. There must, as the children grew older, have been a bright
and lively family party to fill the Rectory, all the more so because the
boys were educated at home instead of being sent to any school. One of
George Austen's sons has described him as being 'not only a profound
sc