The Argosy — page 67: what you’re looking at

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

My Eldest Sister, 57 Ella is hot, flurried and a little cross, and I reluctantly suggest giving up the service. But one of her favourite anthems is to be sung, and she will not hear of staying away. So we rush through the cool, dark cloister, and the old verger bows and smiles us into the stalls; and then we find that, after all, there are a few minutes to spare, and Ella smoothes her ruffled fea- tures, and becomes interested in watching the incoming congregation. Just before the choir and the Dean make their appearance, there enters a solitary gentleman —tall, thin, middle-aged — whom the verger proceeds to induct to one of the vacant seats immediately Opposite ours. Ella looks up and gives my arm a little monitory pinch. She has had a Thackeray fever upon her just lately—Ella is the reader par excellence of our family—and I am not surprised when she whispers excitedly: ‘Colonel Newcome in flesh and blood! Isn’t it wonderful ? ” ‘ But as I look again, I hardly give my little sister credit for her usual discernment. The stranger is too young, and too distinctly a soldier of modern times, to be identified with the dear old Anglo- Indian colonel. He may be forty-five, but scarcely looks so much, though his long moustache and close-cropped hair are abundantly grizzled ; and his face, thin, aquiline and regular-featured, is brown with exposure to fiercer suns than are ever felt on European shores. But the service begins, and I try to give my whole attention to my devotions, and steadily resist the temptation to study my opposite neighbour until my thumb and Ella’s are touching each other under the anthem-book. Then I look across once more, and am startled to meet the steady gaze of a pair of keen, clear grey eyes fixed on my sister. Ella’s colour deepens under the scrutiny of which she speedily becomes aware. Then she suddenly looks across full at the stranger, a bright ray of inspiration illumines her lovely face, and as we sit down she whispers eagerly: “The man whose photo is on papa’s mantelpiece! I knew I had seen him somewhere!” Twenty minutes later, we are standing in the cloister, talking to our newly-found acquaintance as if we had only parted yesterday. For Sir Francis Ferrars is one of our father’s dearest friends, and though we have not met for ten years, even Ella, as soon as she hears his voice, has some shadowy recollection of the good-natured soldier who used to patronise her in the old days of childhood. He has only just arrived in England after ten years of absence : nine of which have been spent in India. For the last few months his name has been prominent among our heroes of the Soudan, and as I look into his face I see that it wears the worn look of suffering— nay, of bitter disappointment—that I have seen on the faces of many who risked their lives—alas! in vain—to save that of England's last and greatest martyr. Sir Francis grasps my hand with friendly warmth, and asserts that comicbooks.com