enough without Jane; let me
help you mix that, now," and Ruth took the basin, and with deft fingers,
which cook secretly admired, beat the compound it contained till it was
pronounced "just the thing."

Notwithstanding her brightness and ready surrender of an evening's
pleasure, Ruth watched John go off with a keen feeling of
disappointment, and for some minutes there was silence in the room.

"She's worth a dozen Janes," said cook to herself, for she was not so
wholly engrossed with her own pursuits as to be quite unobservant of
Ruth's disappointment.

"I don't know how it is," thought Ruth, as the busy evening wore away;
"cook and I do get on well together; she's quite pleasant to-night, and
wasn't cross, though I took the wrong sauce in just now."

Ah, Ruth, if there were more sunny tempers and unclouded faces like
yours in the world, there would oftener come to clouded minds and gloomy
moods just such brightness as you have brought to your fellow-servant
to-night!

John's brother Dick was several years older than John. Some ten years
previously he had taken to a seafaring life, but soon tiring of it, he
had settled in Australia. We say settled, but Dick Greenwood was one of
those men who could never be truly said to settle to anything. He had
tried farming, but the work was too hard; then he had joined a party
going into the bush, their free and easy life having an attraction for
him. After that, he went into a city store, and just as he had mastered
the details of the business and might have succeeded in it, he was
charmed by the performances of a band of travelling actors, and not
being without natural ability in that direction, he had induced them to
accept his services, and now, with little money, and a great deal of
shady experience, he had worked his passage back to England, that he
might just see how things were looking in the old country.

"Well, Jack, my boy, how are you?" he said in a loud, hoarse voice, as
John entered the room, which was redolent of tobacco and brandy.

"All right, Dick; glad to see you, though I shouldn't have known you
again. My word, you're a little different to the thin lath of a fellow
you were when you left home."

"You may say so," cried Dick; "I was a poor milksop then, and no
mistake; but I've improved, and, you bet, I've learned a thing or two."

John was not quite so sure of the improvement. At least the stripling
who had left his father's home was fresh and pure loo