Chapter XIII.

Peggy's Visitors, And Francis' Resolution

The girls were somewhat later in rising on the morning after the party than usual, and when they got up, they found that Peggy was out on one of those errands that Jane and Elsie had been accustomed to do for her. She had got into very good custom, from her real skill and punctuality, even in the short time that she had tried her luck in Edinburgh; and this week she had had more work than she could manage. On these occasions she used to get the assistance of a very poor woman who lived at a considerable distance, who had once been a neighbour of her sister Bessie's, and had been kind to Willie when he was in his last illness. Jane, sometimes with and sometimes without Elsie, had always gone to tell this woman about the work, but on this occasion Peggy had to take the long walk herself—not that she grudged it—for to put half-a-crown in poor Lizzie Marr's pocket was worth a good deal of trouble and fatigue.

She had returned about twelve o'clock, when the girls were getting ready to join their cousin in their promised walk, and just as she got to the top of the stairs, a man's foot was heard at the bottom. They were going for their bonnets, when a sharp tap was heard at the door, and Peggy opened it, and they beheld, not Francis, but Mr. Brandon.

"Well, Peggy," said he, "how are you? I thought I could not be mistaken in those elbows. I have followed you from Prince's Street all this long way, but you would never turn round, and I could not outstrip you, for you know we bushmen are no great walkers, and you always were a wonderful 'Walker' in every sense of the word. And how are you again, Peggy?"

Peggy shook hands with her old master, and gazed at him with great surprise.

"Surely, these are not the bairns you used to speak of?" said Mr. Brandon, looking at the Misses Melville with astonishment quite equal to hers.

"No; the bairns are all at the school—all but Tam—and he's at his trade, but they will be here for their dinners directly. These are two young ladies that have taken a room off me. They are no so well off as they should be, more's the pity," said Peggy, lowering her voice.

"I met them last night at a party. How do you do, Miss Melville?" said he, shaking hands with Elsie first, and then with Jane.

"But what brought you here on this day?" said Peggy.

"Just your elbows, Peggy. I was coming to see you at any rate, but I did not think you were here. You must have shifted your quarters. Here is your address," said Mr. Brandon, taking out his pocket-book—"'Peggy Walker, at Mr. Thomas Lowrie's, Swinton, ——shire.' I was going to see you to-morrow, but you have saved me a journey to no purpose."

"I brought the bairns into the town for better schooling, and on account of Tam; and grandfather finds it agrees brawly with him, too. Grandfather," said Peggy, raising her voice, "this is Master Brandon that you have heard me speak about whiles—the first master I had in Australia."

Grandfather expressed his sense of the politeness of Mr. Brandon in coming all that way to see Peggy. Not but what she was a good lass, and worth going a long journey to have a crack with.

"Well, Peggy," said Mr. Brandon, taking a seat near the fire, "and how do you like this cold country after so many years in a hot one?"

"The winters are not so bad, but the springs are worse to stand. But if a body's moving and stirring about they can aye keep heat in them."

"If moving and stirring can keep you warm you will never be cold. But, Peggy, you will want to hear the news."

"Indeed do I," said Peggy; "the diggings are going on as brisk as ever, I suppose?"

"Just as brisk, and sheep as dear, and wool steady; so, you see, I've taken a holiday."

"But you're going back again?"

"I must go back, for I have not made my fortune yet. But, by-the-by, it is a great pity that you left Melbourne when you did. You would have been a wealthy woman if you had stayed. There's Powell—was he married before you went?"

"Ay, he was. I heard word of it in Melbourne."

"Well, he's as flourishing as possible; he will soon be richer than me. On his own account now. Bought a flock and run, for an old song; cured the sheep; and is now on the highway to wealth. Ah! Peggy, why were you not Mrs Powell?"

"It was not to be," said Peggy, calmly; "but has he any bairns?"

"Two, Peggy; and he is very proud of them."

"Ay, ay; a man has need to be proud and pleased with his own. And the wife?"

"Oh, she's a nice enough person. Getting a little uppish now; but not the manager you are," said Mr. Brandon. "More given to dress and show, and that sort of thing. But I have a message for you from Mr. Talbot, the lawyer, you know, though I dare say he has written to you on the same subject."

"My man of business," said Peggy, with a little pride. "I have not heard from him for a long time."

"He is very sorry indeed, that you let the tenant have a right of purchase to your shop."

"Oh, it is not of much consequence—he never was a saving body; I don't think he will ever raise the 250 pounds."

"Will he not?—when the place is worth 2,500 pounds now; if he borrows the money, he will carry out the purchase, and thus you lose the chance of making a little fortune. He, of course, will keep it on till the end of the lease, at the low rent he has it at, and then take it up for the price specified. You cannot think how vexed I felt to hear you had let this property slip through your fingers."

"It is a pity," said Peggy. "It would really have been a providing for the bairns; but they must just provide for themselves. I am, at least, putting them in the way of doing it. The rent comes in regular enough, and is a help; and the 250 pounds will come in some time, and set us up in some way of doing."

"250 pounds is not the sum it used to be," said Mr. Brandon; "but, in your hands, I have no doubt it will be turned to good account."

"Here come the bairns now," said Peggy, as the quick, noisy steps of the heavily-shod children were heard clattering up the stairs.

"I will now see what you have made so many sacrifices for. Name them as they come in."

"Tom, Jamie, Nancy, Jessie, Willie."

"A fine lot of youngsters, upon my word, and sure to make good colonists." And, as he said this, Mr. Brandon saw a tear stand in the eye of the devoted aunt at his praises of her orphan charge.

"God be praised, they have their health; and on the whole they are good bairns, though a thought noisy whiles," said she.

"There's a gentleman at the stairfoot," said Tom. "He says he has come for you and your sister, Miss Melville, and as it was our dinner-time, he would not come up."

"Bid him walk upstairs, for the dinner's no ready. Mr. Brandon was aye rather an off-put to work, and ye'll no get your dinner for a good quarter of an hour yet."

"We are quite ready," said Jane; "We will go at once. It is our cousin, who was to call for us."

"We may go out to play then for a bit?" said Willie.

"If ye'll no go far, and be sure to be in time for the school."

Francis came up, to be surprised at the sight of Mr. Brandon, and to receive a hurried explanation of his presence at Peggy Walker's, and then they went for a walk. By daylight he was struck more with the change that had shown itself in both of his cousins, and with the poor home they had to live in. Jane's proposal on the previous night to go to Mrs. Dunn's had distressed him more than any other of her projects, and yet he could do nothing to prevent it, unless by making the sacrifice which my young lady readers think he should have made long ago, and given up the estate to marry his cousin. "All for love, and the world well lost," is a fascinating course of procedure in books and on the stage, but in real life there are a good many things to be considered. It was only lately that Francis had discovered how very dear Jane was to him. If such a woman had come across his path when he was in the bank with his 250 pounds a-year, with any reasonable chance of obtaining her, he would have exerted every effort and made every sacrifice to gain such a companion for life. He would have given up all his more expensive bachelor habits—his book-buying, and his public amusements, and thought domestic happiness cheaply purchased by such privations. And if Jane could have shared his brighter fortune, he would have offered his hand and heart long before. But now, even supposing that he had contracted no expensive habits, and he found that he had—that he liked the handsome fortune, and the luxuries annexed to it—it was not his own personal gratification that he was required to give up, but the duties, and the opportunities for usefulness that Jane so highly prized for him. He could not even expect to take as good a position in the world as he had quitted. His place at the Bank of Scotland was filled up, and the quixotic step he thought of taking was not likely to recommend him to business people. And he must prepare not only for providing for a wife and family, but for Elsie, too; and until this day Elsie had shrunk from him, and he had rather despised her; but during their walk he saw the affectionate and sincere nature of Jane's sister. He thought that he could not only offer her a home, but that he had some prospect of making it a happy one, which is by far the most important thing in such matters, and he gradually brought himself to believe that it was right he should make the sacrifice. Other opportunities of usefulness might open themselves in some other sphere; he would give up Cross Hall to the benevolent societies if Jane would only consent to be his wife. The cousinship he thought no objection; they were both very healthy in body and in mind, and as unlike each other in temperament and constitution as if they were not related. Neither Jane nor Elsie was likely to keep her health at a sedentary employment; it was the daily long walk that had kept them so well as they were. It was not right to undervalue private happiness, after all, for any public object whatever. Here was the best and dearest woman in the world suffering daily, both in herself and through her sister, and he could make her happy; he knew that he could do that. If she refused, however, it would interfere with the warm friendship that he knew to be her greatest comfort and his own most precious possession; but she could not, she would not refuse him. He saw the kind look of her eyes; and felt convinced that though Jane believed it was only friendship, the knowledge that she was all the world to him would change it into love. And then to begin life afresh; no longer solitary; no longer unloved; could he not conquer difficulties even greater than he had ever to contend with? He did not pay proper attention at the theatre that night. Jane and her sister were delighted with the performance, and forgot their daily life in the mimic world before them; but he was building such castles in the air all the time that he was not able to criticise the play or the acting, but left that to Elsie, who certainly did it very well.

Chapter XIV.

Good News For Francis

When the children went out, and the young ladies had gone with their cousin, Mr. Brandon took the opportunity of asking how it happened that the Misses Melville were staying with her. She explained their position in a more matter-of-fact way than Miss Rennie had done on the preceding night, and then dilated on their virtues, particularly on Jane's.

"So clever, and so sensible, and so willing! There's nothing she does not understand, and yet, poor thing, she says she must go to the dressmaking, for with all her by-ordinary talents and her by-ordinary education, there is not another hand's turn she can get to do. I'm sure the pains she takes with the bairns at night, I just marvel at it. There's Tam, she can make him do anything she likes. It is a grand thing for a laddie when he is just growing to be a man to have such a woman as Miss Melville to look up to—it makes him have a respect for women."

"He need look no higher than you, Peggy," said Mr. Brandon.

"Ah! but you see I am not quick at the book learning. I'll no complain of Tam for want of respect to myself, for he is a good lad, take him altogether; but then, Miss Jean, she helps him with his problems and his squares, and runs up whole columns of figures like a lang-legged spider, and tells him why things should be so and so, and seems as keen to learn all about the engineering as himself; and she helps Jamie with the Latin, that he craikit on so lang to let him learn, though for my part I see little good it will do him, and him only to follow the joinering and cabinet-making trade; and Tam, he will no be behind, and he must needs learn it too; and as for her writing, ye could read it at the other end of the room. And in her uncle's house there was such order and such government under her eye as there was not to be seen in another gentleman's house in the country. And yet, poor lassie, she says there's nothing but the dressmaking for her. And Miss Elsie, too, writing day and night, and cannot get a bode for her bit poems and verses, till now she is like to greet her een out over every letter she gets from London about them. I can see Miss Jean has been egging up Mr. Hogarth, as they call him—I'm no wishing him any ill, but I wish the auld laird had made a fairer disposition of his possessions—well, Miss Jean has been stirring up this Mr. Francis to take them out for the sake of Elsie, for she is just fading away."

"I like her the best of the two, and she is certainly far the prettiest. The eldest one is a little too clever for me, and too much disposed to preach, even in a ball-room."

"Well, I dare say she saw you had had rather little preaching in the bush, and I am sure you were none the worse of all said to you. But it makes us the more vexed at losing the real value of my bit property, for if I had had the twenty-five hundred pounds you speak about we could have begun business in Melbourne together. She can keep books, and Miss Elsie has a clever hand at the millinery;—we could have got on famously. I must let you see the bairns' writingbooks, and the letters she learns them to write, and their counting-books, too."

Mr. Brandon looked and admired quite to Peggy's satisfaction; and then he spoke to the old man in a kindly way, calling him Mr. Lowrie, and saying he had often heard Peggy speak of him at Barragong. How much pleasure little courtesies like this give to poverty and old age! The old man's face brightened when he heard that he was known at such a distance by such a gentleman as this, and he answered Mr. Brandon's inquiries as to his health and his hearing with eager garrulity.

"Well," said Peggy, "I am no poorer than I was if I had not known about the bit shop being worth so much; but when I think on Miss Jean and her sister, and the lift it might have been to them, I think more of it than I would otherwise do. And now, Mr. Brandon, I'll trouble you to move from the fireside; I must put out the kail. But you were aye fond of being in a body's way."

"I have it," said Mr. Brandon; "it will do."

"What will do?"

"You remember the Phillipses?"

"What should ail me to remember them? But I have such a poor head, I forget to ask the thing I care most about. How's Mr. Phillips, and how's Emily?"

"All well, and the other four, too."

"And Mrs. Phillips?"

"As well as ever, and handsomer than ever, I think."

"Oh! her looks were never her worst fault. But what did you mean by saying it would do?"

"The Phillipses came home in the vessel with me, and are settled in London for good. I think the eldest Miss Melville would be exactly the sort of person they want to superintend the household, for Mrs. Phillips has as little turn for management as ever, and there is a considerable establishment. And, also, she might make Miss Emily and Miss Harriett attend to their lessons, for, though they have masters or some such things, they are too much the mistresses of the house to be controlled by anybody."

"Their father was always very much taken up with these lassies—Emily used to be like the apple of his eye; and the mistress is too lazy to cross them either, I'm thinking," said Peggy.

"Just so. If Miss Melville's preaching in season or out of season can give her a little more sense, I think Phillips will be all the better for it. She can keep house, admirably, you say; and that she is able to teach, these children's books testify. Tell Miss Melville to delay her resolution about the dressmaking till I communicate with Phillips, which I will do by to-day's post. He is talking of coming up to the north shortly, principally to visit you, I think, so he may see her, and can judge for himself. Your account of the young lady seems everything that can be desired, and Mr. Phillips has such a high opinion of your judgment that your recommendation will carry great weight."

"He'll bring Emily with him to see me," said Peggy. "Tell him to be sure and bring Emily with him. I cannot ask you to take pot-luck with us."

"No, I thank you; I have just breakfasted. I do not keep such early hours as I did at Barragong. We turn night into day in these lands of civilization, and for a change it is remarkably pleasant. But how do you take to Scotch fare after Australia?" asked Mr. Brandon, eyeing with astonishment the infinitesimal piece of meat which made the family broth.

"I did not take quite kindly to the porridge at first, and missed the meat that we used to have in such abundance; but use is second nature, and though I whiles look back with regret to the flesh-pots of Egypt, I have my strength, and I have some prospect of getting back to the land of wastrie and extravagance, as I aye used to say it was at Barragong; and Mr. Phillips's place, at Wiriwilta, was worse still. And Mr. Phillips has made his fortune with all that waste, and with all his liberality, and a foolish wife, and an expensive family, and is living in London like a gentleman as he is," said Peggy. "And you really think he would be glad to have Miss Jean?"

"I have not a doubt of it; but good-bye for the present. I hear your youngsters rattling upstairs. I will see you again ere long, and must get better acquainted with them. Good-bye, sir," said Mr. Brandon, to Thomas Lowrie, who having never been called either Mr. or Sir in his life before, was lost in astonishment at the remarkably fine manners of Peggy's old master.

"A very civil-spoken gentleman, Peggy," said he. "It must have been a pleasure to serve a gentleman of such politeness."

"What a pity," said Peggy to herself, "that I ever should have told the young ladies that daft-like story about me and the master. I wish I had bitten my tongue out first. But who was to think of him turning up like this? And he's just the man for Miss Elsie; but I have made her laugh at him, and I misdoubt if her proud spirit will bend to him. And after all, what the worse is he, if she had known nothing about it. And I dare say all young men are alike; and he's better than the most half of them. There was Elsie so taken up with that lad Dalzell, that came courting Miss Jean, and if she had heard half that was said about him, poor Mr. Brandon would have been a saint in comparison. But an opening for Miss Jane is aye worth something. To think of her being put under the like of Mrs. Phillips; and it's like I'll see Emily—a spoiled bairn, no doubt—but she had naturally a fine disposition, at least humanly speaking."

It was not in human nature, however, that Peggy should quite lose sight of her own concerns in her pleasure at the thought of Miss Melville having something better to do than dressmaking. The recollection of the years of hard work that had converted her little shop into a freehold, her old pride in having her title made out on parchment, the hurry she had been in to get it let, to go home by a particular ship, and the obstinate way in which her tenant's wife insisted on a right of purchase, and her own reluctant admission of the clause, thinking that as the house was not new, 250 pounds was an outside value for it, and now to think of its being such a kingdom. The town had run up to her little suburban shop, and far past it; on every side the monster, Melbourne, had been adding to his extent, and now, on account of the bit of garden and large yard, that she had thought would be so nice for the children, when she had them out, and that she had bought very cheap, the value of her property was increased tenfold—but she was none the richer. The sacrifice she had made had turned out even greater than she had expected, and now she could not help thinking of how she would miss Miss Melville, and what a loss it would be to her bairns; and how she was to keep Miss Elsie in tolerable spirits without her sister was another perplexity.

The duties of the day were gone through as usual, however; but when the children and the old man had gone to bed, Peggy made up her mind to make a martyr of herself, and to sit up for the young ladies, who had not been home all day, and with a piece of mending in her hands, which got on but slowly, she mused on her ill luck. Very tired and sleepy, and a little out of humour, she was when she opened the door for Jane and Elsie.

"Well, well! I just hope you're the better of your late hours, though they are not just what I approve of."

"Only once in a way, Peggy; our holiday will soon be over. But you should not have sat up for us—promise not to do it again. We have enjoyed the theatre to-night, have we not, Elsie?"

"Yes, but the disenchantment comes so soon again."

"I have no great opinion of theatres and play-acting, and such like. I was once in a theatre in Melbourne, though," said Peggy.

"With one of your sweethearts, Peggy?" asked Jane.

"Whisht with your nonsense, Miss Jean; don't be talking of sweethearts to a douce woman like me," said Peggy, who, nevertheless was rather proud of her Australian conquests, and liked to hear them alluded to now and then.

"But how did you like the play?"

"I cannot say I did. To see folk dressed up and painted, rampaging about and talking havers, just making fools of themselves. A wee insignificant-looking body setting up to be a king! and the sogers—you should have seen the sogers, as if they could ever fight."

"It is likely there was nothing very first-rate on the Melbourne boards at that time, but our play to-night was perfectly well got up," said Elsie, "and the acting was admirable."

"I'm no clear that at its best the theatre is a fit place for Christian men and women to frequent," said Peggy.

"You prefer the stern realities of life to its most brilliant illusions," said Jane.

"Speaking of the realities of life, Mr. Brandon says he knows of something likely to suit you, Miss Jane," said Peggy.

"Indeed!" said Jane, with an incredulous smile.

"At least, he says you must resolve on nothing till you hear from him. He is going to write to London to Mr. Phillips."

"Your Mr. Phillips—is he in London?"

"Yes; and Mr. Brandon says they are sorely in need of somebody to keep the house—for I fancy everything is at rack and manger if Mrs. Phillips has the management—and to make Emily and Harriett mind their books, for they are such spoiled bairns. I was showing Mr. Brandon what you could do with Tam and Nancy and the others, and he says you are exactly the person that they need; and I can see that it is wondrous feasible."

"What salary should I ask?" said Jane; "or should I leave it to Mr. Phillips?"

"You had better leave it to him; he is not such a skinflint as our benevolent associations. I always found both him and Mr. Brandon open-handed and willing to pay well for all that was done for them. To me, Mr. Phillips was most extraordinary liberal."

"Then you think it likely I will get this situation at a respectable salary?"

"I think you are almost sure of it."

"What good news for Francis, to-morrow!" said Jane.