mingling with her tone. He perceived it,
and it nettled him.

"And I have told you. I answered your
question the last time I was here. I said I
would ne'er keep house with an idiot; no
more I will. So now you've gotten your
answer."

"I have," said Susan. And she sighed
deeply.

"Come, now," said Mrs. Gale, encouraged
by the sigh; "one would think you don't love
Michael, Susan, to be so stubborn in yielding
to what I'm sure would be best for the
lad."

"Oh! she does not care for me," said
Michael. "I don't believe she ever did."

"Don't I? Have not I?" asked Susan,
her eyes blazing out fire. She left the room
directly, and sent Peggy in to make the tea;
and catching at Will, who was lounging
about in the kitchen, she went up-stairs
with him and bolted herself in, straining the
boy to her heart, and keeping almost breathless,
lest any noise she made should cause
him to break out into the howls and sounds
which she could not bear that those below
should hear.

A knock at the door. It was Peggy.

"He wants for to see you, to wish you
good-bye."

"I cannot come. Oh, Peggy, send them away."

It was her only cry for sympathy; and the
old servant understood it. She sent them
away, somehow; not politely, as I have been
given to understand.

"Good go with them," said Peggy, as she
grimly watched their retreating figures.
"We're rid of bad rubbish, anyhow." And
she turned into the house with the intention
of making ready some refreshment for Susan,
after her hard day at the market, and her
harder evening. But in the kitchen, to which
she passed through the empty house-place,
making a face of contemptuous dislike at the
used tea-cups and fragments of a meal yet
standing there, she found Susan, with her
sleeves tucked up and her working apron on,
busied in preparing to make clap-bread, one
of the hardest and hottest domestic tasks of a
daleswoman. She looked up, and first met and
then avoided Peggy's eye; it was too full of
sympathy. Her own cheeks were flushed,
and her own eyes were dry and burning.

"Where's the board, Peggy? We need
clap-bread; and I reckon I've time to get
through with it to-night." Her voice had a
sharp dry tone in it, and her motions had
a jerking angularity in them.

Peggy said nothing, but fetched her all
that she needed. Susan beat her cakes thin
with vehement force. As she stooped over
them, regardless even of the task in which
she seemed so much occupied, she was
surprised by a touch on her mouth of something
— what she did not see at first. It was a
cup of tea, delicately sweetened and cooled,
and held to her lips when exactly ready by
the faithful old woman. Susan held it off a
hand's-breadth, and looked into Peggy's eyes,
while her own filled with the strange relief
of tears.

"Lass! " said Peggy, solemnly, "thou hast
done well. It is not long to bide, and then
the end will come."

"But you are very old, Peggy," said Susan,
quivering.

"It is but a day sin' I were young," replied
Peggy; but she stopped the conversation by
again pushing the cup with gentle force to
Susan's dry and thirsty lips. When she had
drunken she fell again to her labour, Peggy
heating the hearth, and doing all that she
knew would be required, but never speaking
another word. Willie basked close to the
fire, enjoying the animal luxury of warmth,
for the autumn evenings were beginning to
be chilly. It was one o'clock before they
thought of going to bed on that memorable
night.

BOUND FOR BRAZIL.

"AT half-past eleven, a.m." —so said a printed
bill on the mirror of a Southampton coffee-
room where at all hours of day and night, a
waiter with ambrosial curls, and snow-white
cravat, faultlessly tied, an apparently never-
sleeping being, is to be found, intently watchful,
ready to minister to the varied wants of
the continually arriving travellers, from all
parts of the world, by sea and land— "A
small steamer will be ready at the Docks, to
convey passengers and their baggage to the
Bella Donna. The Bella Donna will sail at
three p.m."  Where does the Bella Donna
sail to? What do I know? To every part
of the Indies, as the Spaniards used to call
them. To South American ports— to Jamaica,
—to St. Thomas— to Cuba, everywhere in
those tropical sangaree-drinking regions, either
itself, or in conjunction with other vessels;
that is, personally or by correspondence. The
Bella Donna is a Royal Mail steam-ship, of
multifarious power; a first-class steamer, a
floating hotel with a farm-yard, poultry-yard,
and ice-house; where you can have everything
you call for, and the only disadvantage
is that you can't do what I heard a little girl
cry out very piteously to be allowed to do
the other day in a hurricane between Calais
and Dover— "get out and walk."

On this occasion I was not a traveller, and
therefore coolly surveyed the collection around
me,—the old hands intent on breakfast, the
young ones fidgeting about luggage. In a
Babel of languages orders were given for
coffee, chops, boots, coats, ham, eggs, pens,
portmanteaus, writing-paper, broiled mackerel,
carpet-bags, ink, umbrellas, mackintoshes,
and prawns. The waiters and boots were
equal to the occasion. Travellers and
foreign tongues were familiar to them.
They were not in a hurry, they knew