eary sigh, with which the poor youth concluded his remarks, and Otto
was so touched that he suddenly suggested the propriety of his staying
behind and taking care of him.

"Why, you conceited creature," cried Dominick, "of what use could _you_
be? Besides, don't you think that Pina is a sufficiently good nurse?"

Otto humbly admitted that she was.

Dr Marsh, glancing at her pretty face, on which at the moment there
beamed an expression of deep sympathy, also admitted that she was; but,
being a man of comparatively few words, he said nothing.

It was a busy day for Dominick and his brother. Not only had they to
counsel and advise with the unfortunate emigrants as to the best
position for the temporary encampment, with reference to wood and water,
as well as to assist with their own hands in the erection of tents made
of torn sails and huts and booths composed of broken planks and reeds,
but they had to answer innumerable questions from the inquisitive as to
their own history, from the anxious as to the probabilities of
deliverance, from the practical as to the resources of the islands, and
from the idiotic as to everything in general and nothing in particular.
In addition to which they had to encourage the timid, to correct the
mistaken, and to remonstrate with or resist the obstinate; also to romp
a little with the children as they recovered their spirits, quiet the
babies as they recovered their powers of lung, and do a little amateur
doctoring for the sick in the absence of the medical man.

In all these varied occupations they were much aided by the widow Lynch,
who, instead of proving to be, as they had expected, a troublesome
termagant, turned out to be a soft-hearted, kindly, enthusiastic,
sympathetic woman, with a highly uneducated, unbalanced mind, a
powerfully constituted and masculine frame, and "a will of her own." In
this last particular she did not differ much from the rest of the human
species, but she was afflicted with an unusually strong desire to assert
it.

Very like Mrs Lynch in the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and
sympathy was Mrs Welsh--a poor, gentle, delicate Englishwoman, the wife
of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel, who was a carpenter
by trade and an idler by preference. Mrs Welsh was particularly good
as a sick-nurse and a cook, in which capacities she made herself
extremely useful.

About midday, Mrs Welsh having prepared a glorious though simple meal
for her