get any one to back you in this? I like good
interest, but I cannot lend without better security."

"There's the best of security. Mr. Talbot's next payment is due in two
months, and I make it over to you; and if that does not satisfy you, I
would give you something more next pay day, as much as would cover your
risk and your trouble, and your interest, handsome enough."

"Not at all handsome, if I chance to lose it all. One needs to keep
one's weather eye open, in dealing with old hands like you, Mrs. Peck."

"Then you won't do this for me--such a trifling accommodation as it is?"

"Not without some one to back you," said the money-lender.

"I daresay I can easily find that, if you are so stiff," said Mrs.
Peck, as she flounced off in great indignation, and with very little
hope of succeeding in what was required.

Here was she in possession of a secret worth so much to her, and unable
to turn it to account for want of a beggarly ten or twelve pounds. The
bill discounter was too sharp for her; she must try a good-natured man
next, one who would be willing to do her a kindness--but here again,
Mr. Talbot's letter, her only authority to give any security, would
injure her more than with the keen man of the world. There was a
steamer to sail on the morrow for Melbourne, and no other for a week or
ten days; every day was of the greatest consequence, for now that she
had made up her mind not to make terms with Francis, but to do so with
his cousins, she was eager to carry her resolution into practice, and
she must get on board the Havilah, if possible.

She had lived some weeks in Adelaide in rather a poor way, and in
rather a poor neighbourhood, when she and Peck had come first across.
She had made acquaintance with a very few people, and had left Adelaide
slightly in debt, but in her eagerness she was inclined to overlook
those circumstances, and to hope that some one or other of her late
neighbours might be prevailed on to be a guarantee to the money-lender
merely as a matter of form, and he might be induced to accept of it; so
she turned her steps in the direction of her old residence.

She looked into the shop where she had been accustomed to make her
purchases of groceries, with an intention of paying the eleven
shillings which she owed if things looked promising, and if it would be
a good speculation.

"Well Mrs. Smith, and how are you?" said she to the woman who kept the
establishment with the favourite old