The Sun.
London, England, 1864-05-03 00:00:00

THE SPARE ROOM AT hIEADOWTHORPE.

Janita rubbed her eyes ; they were rather stiff with cry-
ing so much the night before, and then she took a leisurely
survey of the room.

Things look so different when the sun is shining upon
them. Nothing could ever make that prim, cell-like apart-
ment like her own little room in Inverallan Manse; still it
was not so cheerless as she had thought it the night before.
The paper, which, by candlelight, had seemed of such a
dull dapple-grey colour, Janita found to be covered with
blue flowers on a white ground, as if some one had taken
baskets of convolvoluses, and thrown them upon the wall,
leaving them to t‘Nine about as they liked. The tied wee
hung with white dimity, striped with little blue timers like
hose on the paper. There was a very stiff, old-fashioned,
mantel piece, at each end of which stood a white china-dog
with a blue ribbon round its neck, and its nose poir.tiag
up to the ceiling. In the centre was a group, also of whi c
china, representing a shepherd and shepherdess about to
kiss each other. They looked so very near doing it, and eet
it never got done, that Janita felt as if she shoutd like to
push their heads together, and finish the process for them.
But Miss Hepzibah took this group away before next even-
ing, and replaced it by a figure or an old man with wings
and an hour-glass.
There was a deep recess on each side of the fireplace. In
one of these recesses stood the drawers ; over them a framed
piece of embroidery, setting forth the Prophet Elijah as an
old man in ribbed stockings and a red coat, taking what
appeared to be an uncooked beef-steak from a dark coloured
bird, whilst a second was careering forward with a penny
loaf in its bill. To match this, on the other side, was a sam-
pler containing the alphabet worked in six different patterns,
the corners filled in with trees, houses, gooseberry-bushes,
or anything that happened to be convenient. It bore date
a long time back—a very long time back—when Miss
Hepzibah was a little girl in pinafores. Oh, these
samplers 1 How ill-naturedly they reveal dates and ages I
No wonder they are thrust into back bed-rooms by the very
fingers that were pricked so in bringing them to-perfection.
All these
„things Janita took note of as she lay in bed,
rubbing her eyes. After a while she got up, drew the
blind, and leaning her elbows on the broad, low window
seat, took a survey of external nature.

Miss Hepzibah was in the garden. She looked some-
thing like a pickling cabbage herself, for her face was very
red, she having been making damson jelly ever since seven
o'clock, and it was now half-past eight. She was standing
amongst the French beans, with her dress Vaned up, and
a gingham hood, which was not at all becoming; tied over
her black lace cap. But happening to look up she spied
Janita at the long•.room window, and raising her hands
with a gesture of virtuous indignation, she set off down the
walk as fast as a pair of wooden pattens would carry her.

Miss Hepzibah's care in the matter of the shep-
herdess is much to be commended ! As another
evidence of the author's felicitous portrait-painting
we may cite the motley group of figures in discus-
sion at the bridge-side,foremost amongst whom are
these