So little a year, perhaps I
ought to say, for it is far more likely. However, she had put some
pounds in the Savings' Bank, and she was a very nice young woman.
She was not quite pretty; but she had a very frank, honest, bright
face, and all our fellows were fond of her. She was uncommonly neat
and cheerful, and uncommonly comfortable and kind. And if anything
was the matter with a fellow's mother, he always went and showed the
letter to Jane.
Jane was Old Cheeseman's friend. The more the Society went against
him, the more Jane stood by him. She used to give him a good-
humoured look out of her still-room window, sometimes, that seemed
to set him up for the day. She used to pass out of the orchard and
the kitchen garden (always kept locked, I believe you!) through the
playground, when she might have gone the other way, only to give a
turn of her head, as much as to say "Keep up your spirits!" to Old
Cheeseman. His slip of a room was so fresh and orderly that it was
well known who looked after it while he was at his desk; and when
our fellows saw a smoking hot dumpling on his plate at dinner, they
knew with indignation who had sent it up.
Under these circumstances, the Society resolved, after a quantity of
meeting and debating, that Jane should be requested to cut Old
Cheeseman dead; and that if she refused, she must be sent to
Coventry herself.
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