"You see, Miss Jean and Miss Elsie, that my sister Bessie and me were always very much taken up with one another; she was a good bit aulder than me, and as my mother died when I was six years old, she was like a mother to me. I'll no say that she clapped and petted me as you are doing to your sister, Miss Jean, nor that she had the gentle ways of speaking that gentlefolks have; but verily to use the words of Scripture, 'our souls were knit together in love,' and we thought nothing too great to do or to bear for one another. Bessie was far bonnier than me, but scarcely so stout; and Willie Lowrie, that had been at the school with her, and a neighbour's son, courted her, when they came to man's and woman's estate, for a long time. My father was a cotter on Sandyknowe farm, a worthy, God-fearing man, but sore distressed with the rheumatics, that came upon him long before he was an old man, and often laid him off work. His sons went about their own business; and he used to say that though they might help him in the way of money nows and thens, it was from his two lasses that he had the most comfort. Bessie waited till I was grown up and at service in a good place, where I pleased the mistress, before she married Willie. My father went home with her, and lived but three years afterwards, saying always that Bessie and Willie were good bairns to him, and his grey hairs went down to the grave in peace.
"But, wae-sakes! bairns came to Bessie thick and fast, and Willie took a bad cough, and fell into a decline. He just wasted away, and died one cold winter day, leaving her with four young things, and another coming. Bessie did not fold her hands in idle lamentation when the desire of her eyes was removed with a stroke. No, she went to the outwork, and wrought double hard; owre hard, poor thing, for after little Willie was born she never looked up. And then and there I vowed to God and to her that I would do a mother's part by her orphans as long as life was vouchsafed to me.
"Willie's father and mother had left Sandyknowe, and gone to a place about forty miles off. They were living poorly enough, but they came to me in my desolation, and offered to take the bairns if we—that is, my brothers and me—would help whiles with money to get them through. But, you see, James and Sandy were married men, with families of their own, and Robert and Daniel were like to be married soon, and it was borne on my mind that I was to be the chief person to be depended on.
"I went home to my place at Greenwells. It was a big farmhouse, and I was kitchenmaid, and had the milking of the kye, and the making of the butter and cheese to do, and such like, and Mrs. Henderson said that I was a faithful industrious lass. But, dear me! what was seven pounds by the year to maintain the bairns? I thought over it and over it on the Sabbath night after I came home. I tried to read—the 14th of John's Gospel—but my heart would be troubled and afraid in spite of those bonnie consoling words. I knew the old people, the Lowries, were not the best hands for bringing up the bairns, for they were so poor. I had no money—not a penny—for you may guess that in my sister's straits I kept none in the shuttle of my chest, and no way of keeping a house over their heads by myself could I see. Mrs. Henderson came into the kitchen with Miss Thomson. You know Miss Thomson of Allendale. She was on a visit to the mistress; they are connections, you know.
"'Well, Peggy,' said Mrs. Henderson, 'I see you are just fretting, as usual.'
"'I'm no fretting, ma'am, I'm praying,' said I.
"'The best thing you can do,' said Miss Thomson.
"'Of course it is,' said Mrs. Henderson, 'provided it does not hinder work, and Peggy is neglecting nothing.'
"'I wish, ma'am, that you would let me take the housemaid's place, as well as my own; I can do more work if you would raise my wages.'
"'Nonsense, Peggy,' said the mistress, 'you are busy from morning till night; you cannot possibly do more than you are doing now. You cannot be in two places at once.'
"'No, ma'am, but I could take less sleep. I am stronger than ever I was; and I have so many to work for. The bairns-maid and me could manage all the housework.'
"Mrs. Henderson shook her head, and said it was not to be thought of, but she did not mind raising my wages to eight pounds by the year, for I was a good servant; and with that I had to be content—at least, I tried.
"Next day a fat turkey had to be killed and plucked, and I had an old newspaper to burn for singeing the feathers. I could not but look at the newspaper, when I had it in my hand, and the first thing that struck my eye was, that domestic servants, especially if they were skilful about a dairy, might get a free passage to Melbourne, by applying to such a person, at such a place, and that their wages when they got out to Australia would be from sixteen to twenty-five pounds by the year. It was borne on my mind that I should go to Australia from the moment I cast eyes on that paragraph in the paper. I did not just believe everything that was in print, especially in the newspapers, even in those days; for I knew the real size of the big turnip that was grown in Mr. Henderson's field, and it was not much more than half what the 'Courier' had it down for, but I felt convinced that I should inquire about this matter of free passage to Australia. It was a providence that Miss Thomson was stopping in the house at the time, for she was a woman of by-ordinary discretion and great kindness; so I opened my mind to her, and she said I was right, and gave me a letter to the agent, who was a far-away cousin of her own, and three pounds in money forbye, to buy fitting things for the voyage; and she told me how I was to send money home for the youngsters, and wrote a line to a friend of hers that lived close to the Lowries, asking her to look whiles to see that the bairns were well and thriving.
"It is not often that I greet, Miss Jean, but Miss Thomson twice brought the tears to my eyes, first with her kindness when I left Scotland, and again with her kindness when I came back, and brought her, no the silver—I would not shame her with giving back what had really been life and hope to myself and five orphan bairns—but some curious birds that I had got up the country, that she sets great store by. I told her how I had got on, and what had induced me to come back; I told her that I never could pay back my debt to her, and would not try to do it, but that if we prospered, there had been much of it her doing; and she said she admired nothing so much as my resolution and courage in going to Australia, until she admired still more my resolution and self-denial in coming back. I do not think much of flattery, Miss Elsie—they say it is very sweet to the young and the bonnie—but these words of praise from a good woman like Miss Thomson made my heart swell and my eyes overflow. You have been at Allendale, Miss Jean; you must have seen the birds in the lobby."
Jane had been too much engrossed with her own affairs during her only visit to Miss Thomson to observe Peggy's birds, but she drew a good omen form the coincidence of Miss Thomson's assistance being given so frankly to two women both in distress and in doubt.
"How did you like the voyage, Peggy?" asked Jane.
"It is queer how that voyage has faded out of my mind, and yet it was a long one—over five months; they know the road better now, and do it quicker. I was not more than four months coming back in a bigger ship. I mind we had a storm, and all the women on board were awful feared, and a boy was washed overboard, and there was some ill-blood between the captain and the doctor; but all that I could think on was to get to the end of the voyage, and make money to send home to the bairns.
"Well, to Melbourne we got at last, and a shabby place I thought it looked; but the worst of all was, that such wages as had been spoken of in the papers were not to be had at all, for if ever the folk there are in great want of anything, there seems to be abundance of it before it can be sent out; so I could not get the offer of more than thirteen pounds, and I mourned over the distance, and the five months lost on the passage, with such small advantage at the end of it. I said I wanted a hard place. I had no objections to go to the bush—I dreaded neither natives, nor snakes, nor bushrangers, but I behoved to make good wages. I was explaining this at the Agency Labour Office, when a gentleman came in—an Englishman I knew him to be by his tongue—and he said——
"'Like all new comers, this young woman is greedy of filthy lucre.'
"'I have come here to better my condition,' said I.
"'And so you will, in time,' said the gentleman, 'but you must not expect a fortune all at once.'
"'Are you in want of a servant, sir?' said I.
"'Very much; but I don't know that you will suit me.'
"'I'm thinking,' said I, 'that if the mistress were to see me she would be of a different opinion, sir.'
"'Very likely she would. I dare say Mrs. Brandon would highly approve of you. Perhaps, after all, you will do. What are you?'
"'Plain cook, laundress, and dairymaid,' said I.
"'Age? Mrs. Brandon would like to know.'
"'Twenty-five. I have got five years' character from one place, and three from another, and a testimonial from the minister. I may look rough, with just being off the sea, sir, but I think the mistress will find out that I am fit for any kind of work. I am not afraid of work or distance, or solitude, or anything.'
"'You are a trump,' said he, 'a regular brick; but confess that you are greedy. If I say thirty pounds a year, you will go more than a hundred miles up the country?' That was a great distance from town in those days, Miss Jean, though they think nothing of it now. All my fellow-passengers objected to such distances, but I had no objection.
"'Yes, sir,' said I, cheerfully, 'I will go, and be much beholden to you for the offer.'
"'And start to-morrow, wages to commence then?' said he.
"'The sooner the better,' said I. 'Only, if I want to send siller to my friends I may not be able to do it from such a wild place.'
"'I will manage all that for you,' said the gentleman. 'I am accustomed to do it for one of my shepherds. But recollect you will have to do a great deal of work for your high wages. The cows are wild, and must be bailed up and foot-roped. You may get an ugly kick or butt'——
"'As if I had never seen Highland kyloes! I am not at all feared. Providence will protect me on land, as it has protected me by water. After five months of the sea, with only a plank between me and eternity, you cannot terrify me with kye.'
"'We have few conveniences for saving labour; but I see I need not explain anything to you; you can think of nothing but your thirty pounds a year; so, Mr. What's-your-name, draw up the agreement for a year.'
"The agreement was drawn out and signed Walter Brandon and Margaret Walker, and the next day I was on the road, if road you could call it, for the like of it you never saw—sometimes rough and tangled, sometimes soft and slumpy, sometimes scrubby and stony. I marvelled often that they kept in the tracks. I rode on the top of a dray through the day, and slept under it at night. There were four men with us; two of them were inclined to be rough; but I soon let them see that they would need to keep a civil tongue in their heads to deal with me. We were nigh a fortnight on the road, but somehow I did not weary of that as I did of the voyage, for my wages were going on, and something making for the bairns of that journey."
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