hillips went up to his stations; he had a number of
things to see to. What do you know about them?" asked Mr. Dempster,
rather surprised at Mrs. Peck's curiosity.

"I was once in their employment at Wiriwilta, and Mrs. Phillips was
uncommonly good-looking then. There was not so much style in those days
as I suppose there is now."

"Probably not; we have all had to work hard for what we have earned in
these colonies and Phillips must have made his way like the rest of us.
They had a very pretty little establishment in London."

"Kep' their carriage, no doubt," said Mrs. Peck, with a
thinly-disguised sneer.

"No, they did not; but if it's any satisfaction to you to know it, Mrs.
Phillips has had a tour on the Continent, and has had a lady's-maid."

"A lady's-maid," said Mrs. Peck; "well! well! and the children, I
suppose, are being educated up to the nines?"

"They took both the governess and the lady's-maid with them to
Melbourne," said Mr. Dempster. "They were sisters, and very superior
young ladies. In fact, to my taste, Mrs. Frankland, the lady's-maid was
more charming than the mistress; not so regularly handsome--but very
lovely--while as to intelligence and refinement there was no
comparison. If she had been a dozen of years older I might have been a
little presumptuous."

"Was this Mrs. Phillips so very far behind as that her maid was so
superior to her?" asked Mrs. Frankland.

"It happened that these sisters were the young ladies of whom, even in
these distant parts, you may have heard something; who were brought up
to inherit a large property in the south of Scotland, by a very
eccentric uncle, who left everything he had to a son whom nobody had
ever heard of before, and left the girls absolutely penniless."

"Was not their name Melville?" asked Mrs. Peck, eagerly and fiercely.

"Yes," replied Mr. Dempster, astonished to find his chatty
communications to his old friend, Mrs. Frankland, taken up in this way
by this unprepossessing-looking stranger. "Yes, their name was
Melville, and I never in my life met with more amiable, more
intelligent, or better-principled girls."

"I saw about it in the papers," said Mrs. Peck, endeavouring to subdue
her delight and exultation at the idea of the girls she wished so much
to come in contact with being so near her as Melbourne. "I took a great
interest in it. I like these romances of real life. And so, Mrs.
Phillips is up, and these girls are down, and glad to eat