So Janet wandered about after her aunt, with
an adverse feeling at having her home meddled with, but answering
questions and giving opinions, called or uncalled for. Her longing
was for her brothers, and it was a great blow to find that her uncle
had written to both Allen and Mr. Acton that they had better not come
home at present. She thought it cruel and unjust both towards them
and herself; and in her sickening sense of solitude and injury she
had a vague expectation that they were all going to be left wholly
orphans, like the children of fiction, dependent on their uncle and
aunt, who would be unjust, and prefer their own children; and she had
a prevision of the battles she was to fight, and the defensive
influence she was to exert.
That brought to her mind the white slate on which her father had been
writing, and she hurried to secure it, though she hardly knew where
to go or to look; but straying into her father's dressing-room, she
found both it and the tablets among a heap of other small matters
that had been, cleared away when the other chamber had been arranged
into the solemnity of the death-room. Hastily securing them, she
carried them to her own desk in the deserted school-room, feeling as
if they were her charge, and thus having no scruple in reading them.
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