eed, Mrs. Lyndsay, it will be no
easy matter to find just what you want. It is not every one to whom I
would trust the dear baby."

Then sitting down in the nursing chair, and hushing Josey on her knee,
she continued, "I have been thinking of you and the child a great deal
since I heard you were bent on going to Canada; and if you think that I
could be of any service to you, I would go with you, myself. I ask no
wages--nothing of you, beyond a home for my old age."

Mrs. Clarke was a kind, amiable, good woman, but very feeble, nervous,
and sickly, and very little qualified for the arduous and fatiguing life
she had chosen.

"My dear nurse," said Flora, clasping her hand in her own, "I should
only be too happy to have you. But you are old, and in delicate health;
the climate would kill you; I much doubt whether you could stand the
voyage. I cannot be so selfish as to take you from your home and friends
at your time of life. But take off your hat and shawl, and we will talk
the matter over."

The old woman laid the now sleeping babe in the cradle, and resumed her
seat with a sigh.

"It is this want of a home which makes me anxious to go with you. It is
hard to be dependent upon the caprice of brothers, in one's old age.
Thirty years ago and life wore for me a very different aspect."

"Nurse," said Flora, who was very fond of the good old body, who had
attended her with the greatest care and tenderness, through a long and
dangerous illness; "how comes it that such a pretty woman as you must
have been did not marry in your youth? I can scarcely imagine that
nature ever meant you for an old maid."

"Nature never made any woman to be an old maid," said Nurse; "God does
nothing in vain. Women were sent into the world to be wives and mothers;
and there are very few who don't entertain the hope of being so at some
period of their lives. I should not be the forlorn, desolate creature I
am to-day, if I had had a snug home, and a good husband to make the
fireside cheery, and children together about my knees, and make me feel
young again, while listening to their simple prattle.

"I thought to have been a happy wife once," continued Nurse, sadly; "a
heavy calamity that broke another heart besides mine, laid all my hopes
in the dust, and banished from my mind the idea of marriage for ever.
Did I never tell you the story, Ma'am? A few words will often contain
the history of events that embittered a whole life. Whilst I am hem