The eldest, a slim black-haired young lass of thirteen, frisks about the rooms, looks at all the pictures, runs in and out of the verandah, tries the piano, and bursts out laughing at its wheezy jingle (it had been poor Emma's piano, bought for her on her seventeenth birthday, three weeks before she ran away with the ensign; her music is still in the stand by it: the Rev.
Charles Honeyman has warbled sacred melodies over it, and Miss Honeyman considers it a delightful instrument), kisses her languid little brother laid on the sofa, and performs a hundred gay and agile motions suited to her age.
"Oh, what a piano! Why, it is as cracked as Miss Quigley's voice!" "My dear!" says mamma.

The little languid boy bursts out into a jolly laugh.
"What funny pictures, mamma! Action with Count de Grasse; the death of General Wolfe; a portrait of an officer, an old officer in blue, like grandpapa; Brazen Nose College, Oxford: what a funny name!" At the idea of Brazen Nose College, another laugh comes from the invalid.

"I suppose they've all got brass noses there," he says; and explodes at this joke.

The poor little laugh ends in a cough, and mamma's travelling-basket, which contains everything, produces a bottle of syrup, labelled "Master A.Newcome.A teaspoonful to be taken when the cough is troublesome." "'Oh, the delightful sea! the blue, the fresh, the ever free,'" sings the young lady, with a shake.

(I suppose the maritime song from which she quoted was just written at this time.) "How much better this is than going home and seeing those horrid factories and chimneys! I love Doctor Goodenough for sending us here.