"Poor Nina!" and Mrs. Bellairs turned to the miserable pale child, who
looked as if another shivering fit were coming on. "You must make haste
and get better, and come and stay with Flo for a while. We never have
ague."

"You are fortunate," sighed Mrs. Bayne. "I wish that wretched swamp
_could_ be done something to."

"So do I, with all my heart. I must tease William into giving the people
no rest until they do it."

"You will be doing us and our poor neighbours at the shanties no small
service. Ague is dreadfully bad there just now."

A frantic pull at Mrs. Bellairs' hat from the baby interrupted the
conversation, and the visitors rose to go.

When they were once more on the road Mrs. Bellairs turned laughingly to
her companion, "Tell me," she said, "don't you agree with me that a
visit to the Parsonage furnishes a tolerably strong argument in favour
of a clergy such as the Roman Catholic?"

"That is, an unmarried one? Are many of your clergymen's wives like Mrs.
Bayne?"

"If you mean are they worn out, overworked women? Yes, I believe so. How
can they help it indeed, when one hundred a year is a very ordinary
amount for a clergyman's income?"

Mr. Percy shrugged his shoulders. "I agree with you entirely. No man
ought to marry under those circumstances. But I wish you would enlighten
me on one point,--what are shanties?"

"Log-houses of the roughest possible kind, such as are built in the
woods for the gangs of lumberers; that is, you know, the men who cut
down the trees and prepare them for shipping."

"But Mrs. Bayne said something about shanties near here."

"Yes. Beyond their house, there lies, along the river, a swamp of no
great extent, which ought to have been drained long ago. Beyond that, on
the edge of the bush, is a large saw-mill, and the families of the men
employed at this mill live in shanties close by. Every spring and autumn
the sickness among them is terrible, and sometimes there are bad cases
all through the summer. But you may imagine what it is among those
people in their wretched damp, unventilated homes, when even the Baynes
suffer as poor little Nina is doing now, and did most of the spring."

"Delightful country!" said Mr. Percy, "and people positively like to
live here."

"Yes!" replied Mrs. Bellairs, with spirit, "and with good cause. As for
what I have been telling you, has not England been quite as bad? I have
heard that in Lincolnshire, and the adjoining counties, not a l