Jane to advance without let or hindrance.

But Jane stood there with pique in her breast, and her long thin arms
laid rigid against her sides. "Let her 'dear child' me, if she wants to;
she sha'n't bring me around in any such way as that."

All this, however, availed little against Mrs. Bates's new manner. The
citadel so closely sealed to charity was throwing itself wide open to
memory. The drawbridge was lowered, and the late enemy was invited to
advance as a friend.

Nay, urged. Mrs. Bates presently seized Jane's unwilling hands. She
gathered those poor, stiff, knotted fingers into two crackling bundles
within her own plump and warm palms, squeezed them forcibly, and looked
into Jane's face with all imaginable kindness. "I had just that temper
once myself," she said.

The sluice-gates of caution and reserve were opening wide; the streams of
tenderness and sympathy were bubbling and fretting to take their course.

"And your father is well? And you are living in the same old place? Oh,
this terrible town! You can't keep your old friends; you can hardly know
your new ones. We are only a mile or two apart, and yet it is the same as
if it were a hundred."

Jane yielded up her hands half unwillingly. She could not, in spite of
herself, remain completely unrelenting, but she was determined not to
permit herself to be patronized. "Yes, we live in the same old place. And
in the same old way," she added--in the spirit of concession.