e too near for her to attempt to wile away the minutes with
another song--tears of weariness and disappointment. The disappointment
was caused by the non-arrival of the keen-eyed, bent-shouldered old
gentleman who was to raise her eventually to the pinnacle of fame--and
by John's absence.

It was just as this great matter was straining her heart almost to
breaking point that a heavy hand fell upon her shoulders, and she looked
up into the face of a roughly clad, ill-kempt looking man--a face that
in some way seemed familiar to her.

"I b'lieve you're the very little girl as I've been on the look-out for
all day," he said. "Le's look at you! Yes, s'elp my Jimmy Johnson, you
are! If you'll just come along with me, we'll talk about your name an' a
few other things."

He held out his hand and took hers.

"Your name," he said, "as it ain't John Brown, may be Elizabeth Bruce.
Ain't I right now?"

Betty tremblingly admitted that he was, and listened as she walked the
length of a street by his side to his jocularly spoken lecture and to
all the dire happenings--gaols, reformatories, ships, etc.--that befell
she or he who left the home nest before such glorious time as they were
twenty-one.

Finally Betty and her earnings were placed in a cab, and the man,
holding her arm firmly, stepped in after her. He seemed to be afraid,
all the time, that if he moved his hand from her she would be off and
away. They rattled down the Sydney streets in the lamplight, which
Betty had never seen before this night, to the harbour waters and across
them in a punt, and the little girl thought tiredly of her journey in
the greengrocer's cart not so very many hours ago.

The remembrance brought with it a flash of light. This man by her side
was the greengrocer!--their morning friend. She decided that she would
soon ask him about John, ask him whether he had found John also.

But before she could satisfactorily arrange her question a great
heaviness settled down upon her, and her head nodded and her eyes
blinked and blinked and fell too. And all thought of money-making and
street-singing, and John Brown slipped away and left her in a merry land
of dreams playing with Cyril and Nancy in the old home garden.

"Poor little mite," said the man, and he slipped his roughly clad arm
around her and drew her towards him so that her head might rest on his
coat. "Poor little mite! She'd find the world but a rough place, I'm
thinking!"

And they spe