Dear, dear England! why was I forced by a stern necessity to leave you?  What heinous crime had I committed, that I, who adored you, should be torn from your sacred bosom, to pine out my joyless existence in a foreign clime?  Oh, that I might be permitted to return and die upon your wave-encircled shores, and rest my weary head and heart beneath your daisy-covered sod at last!  Ah, these are vain outbursts of feeling—­melancholy relapses of the spring home-sickness!  Canada! thou art a noble, free, and rising country—­the great fostering mother of the orphans of civilisation.  The offspring of Britain, thou must be great, and I will and do love thee, land of my adoption, and of my children’s birth; and, oh, dearer still to a mother’s heart-land of their graves!

* * * * * *

Whilst talking over our coming separation with my sister C—–­, we observed Tom Wilson walking slowly up the path that led to the house.  He was dressed in a new shooting-jacket, with his gun lying carelessly across his shoulder, and an ugly pointer dog following at a little distance.

“Well, Mrs. Moodie, I am off,” said Tom, shaking hands with my sister instead of me.  “I suppose I shall see Moodie in London.  What do you think of my dog?” patting him affectionately.

“I think him an ugly beast,” said C—–.  “Do you mean to take him with you?”

“An ugly beast!—­Duchess a beast?  Why she is a perfect beauty!—­Beauty and the beast!  Ha, ha, ha!  I gave two guineas for her last night.” (I thought of the old adage.) “Mrs. Moodie, your sister is no judge of a dog.”

“Very likely,” returned C—–­, laughing.  “And you go to town to-night, Mr. Wilson?  I thought as you came up to the house that you were equipped for shooting.”

“To be sure; there is capital shooting in Canada.”

“So I have heard—­plenty of bears and wolves.  I suppose you take out your dog and gun in anticipation?”

“True,” said Tom.

“But you surely are not going to take that dog with you?”

“Indeed I am.  She is a most valuable brute.  The very best venture I could take.  My brother Charles has engaged our passage in the same vessel.”

“It would be a pity to part you,” said I.  “May you prove as lucky a pair as Whittington and his cat.”

“Whittington!  Whittington!” said Tom, staring at my sister, and beginning to dream, which he invariably did in the company of women.  “Who was the gentleman?”

“A very old friend of mine, one whom I have known since I was a very little girl,” said my sister; “but I have not time to tell you more about him now.  If you so to St. Paul’s Churchyard, and inquire for Sir Richard Whittington and his cat, you will get his history for a mere trifle.”

“Do not mind her, Mr. Wilson, she is quizzing you,” quoth I; “I wish you a safe voyage across the Atlantic; I wish I could add a happy meeting with your friends.  But where shall we find friends in a strange land?”