ot much in my line; but no doubt books are
things that are wanted in the world, or there would not be such
printing-houses and grand shops for making and selling them. And you
are expecting to get a price for that, Miss Elsie?"

"I hope so."

"Well, it is more genteel work than what I have been used to; but the
pen was always a weariness to me. I thought shame of myself when I was
in Australia, that I could write nothing to the bit creatures that I
was spending my life for, but just that I was weel, and hoped they were
the same, and bidding them be good bairns, and obedient and dutiful to
their grandfather and grandmother, and that they should mind what the
master said to them at school; and then I would send kind regards to
two or three folk in the countryside, and signed myself their
affectionate aunt, Margaret Walker. But, dear me! I should have said
fifty things forbye that senseless stuff. I am thinking, Miss Jane and
Miss Elsie, that if they had been your nephews and nieces, and you had
been parted from them by all these thousands of miles of land and
water, that your letters would have been twice as often and ten times
as long, full of good advice and loving words. I have heard bonnie
letters read to me. I marvelled greatly at them--everything so smooth
and so distinct, just as if the two were not far apart, but had come
together for an hour or so, and the one just spoke by word of mouth all
that the other wanted most to hear. I would like the bairns learned to
write well and fast, for when the pen is slow, the heart Cannot find
utterance. I have heard worse letters even than my own, full of
repetitions and stupid messages, and nothing said of what the body that
got the letters wanted most to hear. There is a very great odds in
letters, Miss Melville, and mine were so useless and so bare, that I
thought it better to sacrifice a good deal of money and come home to
attend to the bairns myself, and to counsel them by word of mouth."

"Peggy, you have had adventures," said Jane. "I wish you could tell my
sister and me all that happened to you when you were in Australia. Your
life may be useful to us in many ways."

"Not to put into a book, I hope," said Peggy suspiciously. "I have no
will to be put into a book."

"No fear of that," said Elsie.

"It's poetry you're writing, like Robbie Burns's. I can see the lines
are different lengths. I'm thinking you'll have no call to make any
poetry on me, so I may tell yo