“O yes, sir, they are both in one family, the family of Squire Carruthers in Flanders.  Tryphena is the eldest; she’s twenty-five, and is cook and milker and helps with the washing.  Tryphosa is only twenty, and attends to the other duties of the house.  Mrs. Carruthers is not above helping in all the work herself, so that she knows how to treat her maids properly.  Still, I am anxious about them.”

“Nothing wrong with their health, I hope?” asked the lawyer.

“No, sir; in a bodily way they enjoy excellent health.”

“Pardon me, Mrs. Hill,” interrupted Coristine, “for saying that your perfectly correct expression calls up that of a friend of mine.  Meeting an old college professor, very stiff and precise in manner and language, he had occasion to tell him that, as a student, he had enjoyed very poor health.  ‘I do not know about the enjoying of it, sir,’ he answered, ’but I know your health was very poor.’  Ha, ha! but I interrupted you.”

“I was going to say, sir, that I have never been ambitious, save to keep a good name and live a humbly useful life, with food convenient for me, as Agur, the son of Jakeh, says in the Book of Proverbs, in which, I suppose, he included clothing and shelter, but I did hope my girls would look higher than the Pilgrims.”

“You don’t mean John Bunyan’s Christian and Christiana, and Great Heart, and the rest of them?”

“Oh, no!” replied the old lady, laughing, “mine are living characters, quite unknown to the readers of books, Sylvanus and Timotheus, the sons of old Saul Pilgrim.”

“Oh, that’s their name, is it?  The Crew never told me his surname, nor did Captain Thomas.”

“You know Sylvanus’ captain, then?  But, has he many sailors besides Pilgrim?”

“No; that’s why I call him The Crew.  It’s like a Scotch song, ’The Kitty of Loch Goil,’ that goes:—­

     For a’ oor haill ship’s companie,
     Was twa laddy and a poy, prave poys

Sylvanus is The Crew, who goes on a cruise, like Crusoe.  O, do forgive me, Mrs. Hill, for so forgetting myself; we have been so long away from ladies’ society,” which, considering the circumstances of the preceding day, was hardly an ingenuous statement.

“I am not so troubled about the elder Pilgrim and Tryphena,” continued the old lady, “because Tryphena is getting up a little in years for the country; I believe they marry later in the city, Mr. Coristine?”

“O yes, always, very much, I’m sure,” answered the lawyer, confusedly.

“Tryphena is getting up, and—­well, she takes after her father in looks, but will make any man a good wife.  Then the elder Pilgrim has good morals, and is affectionate, soft I should be disposed to call him; and he has regular employment all the year round, though often away from home.  He has money saved and in the bank, and has a hundred-acre farm in the back country somewhere.  He says, if Tryphena refuses him, he will continue to risk his life among the perils of the deep, by which the silly fellow means Lake Simcoe.”  Here the quondam schoolmistress broke into a pleasant laugh that had once been musical.