Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 123: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

106 REYNOLDS’ WORKS notwithstanding I now learned that there was not the re- motest degree of kinship between her and us, yet I thought that having so long regarded her in another light, it would have been but decent to exhibit a proper respect for her memory. Frank told me that a gentleman, whose name he did not know, had brought him to school; and it appeared that this gentleman, or, rather, nobleman, took his departure immediately, and did not ask to see me. “Frank likewise told me that about ten months back he had been taken to a large building in London, where he had seen that lady again, and that she was then in perfect health. On that occasion he had for the first time beheld the nobleman who afterward brought him to school, for that he was a nobleman could be conjectured from the circum- stance that he had worn a star upon his breast when Frank saw him first of all. My brother likewise told me that on the previous day — that before he arrived at the school, and which was ten months after his visit to the lady at the great building in London—this same nobleman, after taking possession of Mrs. Burnaby’s papers and letters, had conducted him to the splendid mansion in the park, where he saw the lady a third time, and also those two young ladies previously mentioned. The lady whom he had been taken specially to see wept over him, murmuring that perhaps she should never see him more, and she cut off a lock of his hair. He was then consigned to the charge of that nobleman who brought him to the school at Southampton. Such was the substance of the information which Frank gave me, and amidst my grief at the death of poor Mrs. Burnaby, it was a source of comfort to have my brother beneath the same roof with myself. “At the time of which I am now speaking he was ign and I was sixteen. He of course lived in the department of the establishment allotted to the boys, while I dwelt in that appropriated to the female scholars. We however saw each other for a short time every day, and for several hours on Sunday. I was therefore now much happier than I had been when at this school by myself, and I did my best to make my poor brother happy also. We were well provided with clothes by the master and mistress according as we wanted them, and we were likewise allowed a sufficiency of pocket-money. I think that Mr. and Mrs. Jennings sus- Gomicbooks. co