,
for I am so timid with any one else driving on these dreadful roads;
and as for what Dr. Grant says about my being fit for the journey, he
is not my medical man this time, so I won't go by his advice. Besides,
he don't understand my constitution as Dr. M---- does," said Mrs.
Phillips.

"I feel very sorry to leave you, Lily," said Harriett.

"Oh, I dare say I'll get on very well, even without you. Alice and
nurse will do for me until Stanley comes. Tell him how I weary to see
him the very first thing you say when you see him. Whenever he's done
with going over the stations, beg him to come down. Alice has written
for me to tell him to make haste. I am not strong enough yet to sit up
to write."

The idea that Harriett might hasten her husband's return to her, helped
to reconcile Mrs. Phillips to the very cavalier treatment she received
from that young lady.

Harriett enjoyed her drive exceedingly. Dr. Grant knew who lived in a
great many houses that they passed, and they carried with them the
great subject of agreeable conversation in themselves. The Derbyshire
country and the Highland scenery was compared and contrasted with the
Victorian, very much to the disadvantage of the latter, which, indeed,
did not look its best, but its very worst at this time. Mr.
Ballantyne's station Harriett confessed to be rather prettily situated;
but things in the house were much rougher than she had expected, and
the house itself was of a very irregular and primitive style of
architecture--the slab hut enlarged so as to be tolerably commodious;
yet, still, the very house that the squatter had built, partly with his
own hands, in the early days of the colony. He had not been a fortunate
man, but he had got his head above water since the gold discoveries;
and he was not so imprudent as to involve himself again by building a
handsome house so long as the old one would do. Mrs. Ballantyne had an
overweening opinion of the advantages of English society and English
education, and received Miss Phillips with an amount of adulation quite
beyond anything she had ever met with in her life; which was all the
more effective from its being perfectly sincere. Her own children were
but half educated, and very deficient in acquired manner; and they too
looked with awe on Mr. Phillips's English sister, who was so
self-possessed and so fashionably dressed. To a person less conscious
of her own superiority, Mrs. Ballantyne's profuse apologies for
ev