Jessie" -

Miss Jessie went very white, then flushed scarlet, and looked
eagerly at Miss Jenkyns.

"A gentleman, my dear, who wants to know if you would see him."

"Is it?--it is not"--stammered out Miss Jessie--and got no farther.

"This is his card," said Miss Jenkyns, giving it to Miss Jessie;
and while her head was bent over it, Miss Jenkyns went through a
series of winks and odd faces to me, and formed her lips into a
long sentence, of which, of course, I could not understand a word.

"May he come up?" asked Miss Jenkyns at last.

"Oh, yes! certainly!" said Miss Jessie, as much as to say, this is
your house, you may show any visitor where you like. She took up
some knitting of Miss Matty's and began to be very busy, though I
could see how she trembled all over.

Miss Jenkyns rang the bell, and told the servant who answered it to
show Major Gordon upstairs; and, presently, in walked a tall, fine,
frank-looking man of forty or upwards. He shook hands with Miss
Jessie; but he could not see her eyes, she kept them so fixed on
the ground. Miss Jenkyns asked me if I would come and help her to
tie up the preserves in the store-room; and though Miss Jessie
plucked at my gown, and even looked up at me with begging eye, I
durst not refuse to go where Miss Jenkyns asked. Instead of tying
up preserves in the store-room, however, we went to talk in the