Smudge, our old black cat, in her arms, and was welcomed by both of
them with much effusion. Jack was a tall, thin girl, all legs and
arms, with a droll, freckled face and round blue eyes, with all the
awkwardness of fourteen, and none of its precocity. Her real name was
Jacqueline, but we had always called her Jack, for brevity, and
because, with her cropped head and rough ways, she resembled a boy
more than a girl; her hair was growing now, and hung about her neck
in short ungainly lengths, but I doubt whether in its present stage
it was any improvement. I am not at all sure strangers considered
Jack a prepossessing child, she was so awkward and overgrown, but I
liked her droll face immensely. Fred was always finding fault with
her and snubbing her, which brought him nothing but pert replies;
then he would entreat mother to send her to school, but somehow she
never went. Dot could not spare her, and mother thought there was
plenty of time, so Jack still roamed about at her own sweet will;
riding Dapple barebacked round the paddock, milking Cherry, and
feeding the chickens; carrying on some pretense at lessons with
Carrie, who was not a very strict mistress, and plaguing Fred, who
had nice ways and hated any form of untidiness.

"Oh, you dear thing!" cried Jack, leaping from the window-seat and
nearly strangling me, while Smudge rubbed himself lovingly against my
dress; "oh, you dear, darling, delightful old Esther, how pleased I
am to see you!" (Certainly Jack was not undemonstrative.) "Oh, it has
been so horrid the last few days--father ill, and mother always with
him, and Fred as cross as two sticks, and Carrie always too busy or
too tired for any one to speak to her; and Dot complaining of pain in
his back and not caring to play, oh!" finished Jack, with a long-drawn
sigh, "it has been almost too horrid."