u my story. It may make you think on
somebody or something out of your own troubles."

"It was a great wonder to the Swinton people that you returned a single
woman," said Jane. "They say Australia is the country to be married in."

"I might have been married over and over again, up the country, and in
Melbourne too," said Peggy; "but you see I had the thought of the
bairns on my head, and I did not feel free to change my condition. Some
of them said if I likit them well enough I could trust to their doing
better for the young folk than I could myself; but I never let myself
like them well enough to trust them so far, though one or two of them
were very likely men, and spoke very fair."

"Perhaps when you return to Australia you may make it up with one of
them yet," said Elsie, who, in spite, of her depression, felt some
curiosity as to Peggy's love passages.

"The best of them married before I left Melbourne, like a sensible man,
who knew better than to wait on my convenience. I see, Miss Elsie, you
are wondering that the like of me, that never was what you would call
well-favoured, should speak of offers, and sweet-hearts, and such like;
but in Australia it's the busy hand and careful eye that is the great
attraction for a working man. I never had much daffing or nonsense
about me, and did not like any of it in other folk, but I had lots of
sweethearts. But I'll tell you the whole story, as neither of you look
the least sleepy, and if I am owre long about it ye may just tell me
so, and I'll finish it up the morn's night."

So Peggy sat down to tell her tale, while Elsie crept down on a little
footstool, and laid her head in her sister's lap, glad to receive the
fondling which Jane instinctively bestowed on her dependent and
affectionate sister.

Chapter VIII.

Peggy Walker's Adventures

"You see, Miss Jean and Miss Elsie, that my sister Bessie and me were
always very much taken up with one another; she was a good bit aulder
than me, and as my mother died when I was six years old, she was like a
mother to me. I'll no say that she clapped and petted me as you are
doing to your sister, Miss Jean, nor that she had the gentle ways of
speaking that gentlefolks have; but verily to use the words of
Scripture, 'our souls were knit together in love,' and we thought
nothing too great to do or to bear for one another. Bessie was far
bonnier than me, but scarcely so stout; and Willie Lowrie, that had
been at the