“I took the measure of Mr. Brandon that week, and I came to the determination that I ought to stay.  To be sure it was wrong of him to fetch me out on false pretences, as it were, but I had walked into the trap myself, and, as he said, he was in great need of a servant.  He might be weak, but he was not wicked; at least, I felt that I could hold my own.  It was a rough place for a gentleman to live in.  Am I wearying you, young ladies?  I could leave off now, and go on the morn’s night.”

“I am interested very much in your story,” said Elsie.

“And so am I,” said Jane.  “I know not where fortune, or rather, as you more properly call it, Providence may send us; and your experience has a peculiar fascination to me.  Do, pray, go on.”

“Well, as I was saying, it was a rough place, and he was a gentleman in his up-bringing and in many of his ways.  You would not have believed, if you had seen him in Melbourne, and heard him speak such English, that he could go about in an old ragged, dirty shooting-coat, with a cabbage-tree hat as black as a coal nearly—­that he could live in a slab hut, with a clay, or rather, a dirt floor, and a window-bole with no glass in it—­and that he could have all the cooking and half the work of the house done at the fireside he sat at, and sit down at a table without a table-cloth, and drink tea out of tin pannikins.  The notion of getting such wages in a place with such surroundings quite dumb-founded me; and he had the things too; for by-and-by I found napery and china in a big chest that I used for a table out of doors; and bit by bit I made great improvements at Barragong.  He gave me one of the huts for myself, and I was a thought frightened to sleep there my leafu’ lane at first, but I put my trust in my Maker, and He watched over me.  I cooked in my own hut, and settled up the master’s.  He began to think that a boarded floor would be an improvement, and he got the men to saw them up.  Hard work it was for them; and ill-coloured boards they made; but when they were laid down, and a glass window put in, the master’s hut looked more purpose-like.

“I was not feared for the wild kye when I saw that the stockkeeper would help me to get them into the bail; and when we got a milk-house dug out of the hill-side, I made grand butter.  I’ll not soon forget the day I had my first kirning.  The stockkeeper—­George Powell was his name—­had got into the dairy, as I thought, to lick the cream, for he was an awful hand on it; but he kept hanging about, and glowering at the milk-pans, and then looking at me, till at last he said some nonsense, and I told him to be off with his daffing; I would tell the master if he said an uncivil word.

“‘I don’t mean to be uncivil, Peggy; quite the contrary,’ says he.

“‘Then what do you mean?’ says I, taking his hand off my shoulder, and driving it bang against the stone slab we put the milk-pans on.

“‘I mean, Peggy, will you marry me?’ says he; ’that’s civil enough, surely.’