The features
were large, the complexion dark but not clear, and the look of
resolution in the square-cut chin and closely shutting mouth was more
boy-like than girl-like. Janet Brownlow was assuredly a very plain
girl, but the family habit was to regard their want of beauty as
rather a mark of distinction, capable of being joked about, if not
triumphed in.
Nor was Allen, the boy, wanting in good looks. He was fairer,
clearer, better framed in every way than his sister, and had a
pleasant, lively countenance, prepossessing to all. He had a well-
grown, upright figure, his father's ready suppleness of movement, and
his mother's hazel eyes and flashing smile, and there was a look of
success about him, as well there might be, since he had come out
triumphantly from the examination for Eton College, and had been
informed that morning that there were vacancies enough for his
immediate admission.
There was a pensiveness mixed with the satisfaction in his mother's
eyes as she looked at him, for it was the first break into the home.
She had been the only teacher of her children till two years ago,
when Allen had begun to attend a day school a few streets off, and
the first boy's first flight from under her wing, for ever so short a
space, is generally a sharp wound to the mother's heart.
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