time every day, and this she considered she could not do as a governess.  So she determined to risk her savings, and start a boarding and day school in Melrose, a beautiful and healthy neighbourhood, and with the aid of a governess, impart what was then considered the education of a gentlewoman to the girls in the neighbourhood.  She took with her her old mother, and a sister who managed the housekeeping, and taught the pupils all kinds of plain and fancy needlework.  She succeeded, and she lived till the year 1866, although most of her teaching was done from her sofa.  When my mother was asked what it was that made Phin so successful, and so esteemed, she said it was her commonsense.  The governesses were well enough, but the invalid old lady was the life and soul of the school.  There were about 14 boarders, and nearly as many day scholars there, so long as there was no competition.  When that came there was a falling off, but my young sister Mary and I were faithful till the day when after nine years at the same school, I went with Jessie to Wooden, to Aunt Mary’s, to hear there that my father was ruined, and had to leave Melrose and Scotland for ever, and that we must all go to Australia.  That was in April, 1839.

As I said, I had a very happy childhood.  The death of my eldest sister at 16, and of my youngest sister at two years old, did not sink into the mind of a child as it did into that of my parents, and although they were seriously alarmed about my health when I was 12 years old, when I developed symptoms similar to those of Agnes at the same age, I was not il1 enough to get at all alarmed.  I was annoyed at having to stay away from school for three months.  When the collapse came Jessie had a dear friend of some years’ standing, and I had one whom had known only for some months, but I had spent a month with her in Edinburgh at Christmas, 1838, and we exchanged letters weekly through the box which came from Edinburgh with my brother John’s, washing.  It was too expensive for us to write by the post.  Well, neither of our friends wrote a word to us.  With regard to mine it was not to he wondered at much—­she was only 13—­but the other was more surprising.  It was not till 1865 that an old woman told me that when Miss F. B. came to return some books and music to her to give to my aunt in Melrose, “she just sat in the chair and cried as if her heart would break.”  She was not quite a free agent.  Very few single women were free agents in 1839.  We were hopelessly ruined, our place would know us no more.

The only long holidays I had in the year I spent at Thornton Loch, in East Lothian, 40 miles away.  I did not know that my father was a heavy speculator in foreign wheat, and I thought his keen interest in the market in Mark lane was on account of the Thornton Loch crops, in which first my grandfather and afterwards the three Maiden aunts were deeply concerned.  My mother’s father, John Brodie, was one of the most enterprising agriculturists in the most advanced