His eldest daughter looked almost as old as himself, and betrayed
the fact that his real was more than his apparent age. Miss Brown
must have been forty; she had a sickly, pained, careworn expression
on her face, and looked as if the gaiety of youth had long faded
out of sight. Even when young she must have been plain and hard-
featured. Miss Jessie Brown was ten years younger than her sister,
and twenty shades prettier. Her face was round and dimpled. Miss
Jenkyns once said, in a passion against Captain Brown (the cause of
which I will tell you presently), "that she thought it was time for
Miss Jessie to leave off her dimples, and not always to be trying
to look like a child." It was true there was something childlike
in her face; and there will be, I think, till she dies, though she
should live to a hundred. Her eyes were large blue wondering eyes,
looking straight at you; her nose was unformed and snub, and her
lips were red and dewy; she wore her hair, too, in little rows of
curls, which heightened this appearance. I do not know whether she
was pretty or not; but I liked her face, and so did everybody, and
I do not think she could help her dimples. She had something of
her father's jauntiness of gait and manner; and any female observer
might detect a slight difference in the attire of the two sisters--
that of Miss Jessie being about two pounds per annum more expensive
than Miss Brown's. Two pounds was a large sum in Captain Brown's
annual disbursements.

Such was the impression made upon me by the Brown family when I
first saw them all together in Cranford Church. The Captain I had
met before--on the occasion of the smoky chimney, which he had
cured by some simple alteration in the flue. In church, he held
his double eye-glass to his eyes during the Morning Hymn, and then
lifted up his head erect and sang out loud and joyfully. He made