g
sideways at her.

"Don't worry about it," he ventured at last; "things'll look up, they
will; when he's back at Marbridge with your mother he'll be all right.
She always had a great influence over him, she had, indeed."

Julia said "Yes." But he did not feel there was much enthusiasm in the
monosyllable, so he cast about in his mind for something to cheer her
and thus remembered a very important matter.

"What an old fool I am!" he exclaimed. "There's something I ought to
have told you the moment you came in, and I've clean forgotten it
until now; it's good news, too! There is a lawyer wants to see you."

"What about?" Julia asked; she did not seem to naturally associate a
lawyer with good news.

"A legacy," Johnny answered triumphantly.

Julia was much astonished; she could not imagine from whence it came,
but before she asked she made the business-like inquiry, "How much?"

"Not a great deal, I'm afraid," Mr. Gillat was obliged to say; "still,
a little's a help, you know; it may be a great help; you remember your
father's Aunt Jane?"

Julia did, or rather she remembered the name. Great-aunt Jane was one
of the relations the Polkingtons did not use; she was not rich enough
or obliging enough to give any help, nor grand enough for
conversational purposes. She never figured in Mrs. Polkington's talk
except vaguely as "one of my husband's people in Norfolk;" this when
she was explaining that the Captain came of East Anglian stock on his
mother's side. Jane was only a step-aunt to the Captain; his mother
had married above her family, her half-sister Jane had married a
little beneath--a small farmer, in fact, whose farming had got smaller
still before he died, which was long ago. Great-aunt Jane could not
have much to leave any one, but, as Mr. Gillat said, anything was
better than nothing; the real surprise was why it should have been
left to Julia.

She asked Johnny about it, but he could not tell her much; he really
knew very little except that there was something, and that the lawyer
wanted her address and was annoyed when her relations could not give
it. Indeed, even went so far as to think they would not, and that it
would be his duty to take steps unless she was forthcoming soon.

"I had better go to his office to-morrow," Julia said; "I suppose you
know where it is?"

Mr. Gillat did, and they arranged how they would go to-morrow, Johnny,
who was to wait outside, solely for the pleasure and excitement