But that half-crown over the mantelpiece helped him wonderfully.

Raby continued to regard him from a distance with a friendly eye, and now and then alarmed him by challenging him to some daring act of mutiny which was sure to end in confusion, but which, for all that, always seemed to him to have some compensation in the fellow-feeling it established between the poor librarian and the dependent and kept-under niece.
News arrived now and then from India, bringing relief as to what was past, but by no means allaying anxiety as to what might be in store for the soldier there.

A week before Christmas, Raby told Jeffreys, with mingled pride and trepidation, that her father had written to say he had been made major, and expected to be sent in charge of a small advance force towards Kandahar, to clear the way for a general advance.

By the same post another letter came for Mrs Rimbolt, the contents of which, as the Fates would have it, also came to Jeffreys' ears.
"My dear," said the lady, entering the library that evening, letter in hand, and addressing her husband, who was just then engaged with his librarian in inspecting some new purchases, "here is a letter from my old friend Louisa Scarfe.

She proposes to come to us for Christmas, and bring with her her son, who is now at Oxford.