amp, ready for the process of packing,
into which Nettie plunged without a moment's interval. While Mrs Smith
told Edward Rider her story, Nettie was flying up and down stairs with
armfuls of things to be packed, and pressing Smith himself into her
service. Ere long the hall was piled with heaps of personal property,
ready to be transferred to those big receptacles. In the excitement of
the work her spirit rose. The headlong haste with which she carried on
her operations kept her mind in balance. Once or twice Susan peeped out
from the parlour door, and something like an echo of laughter rang out
into the hall after one of those inspections. Nettie took no notice
either of the look or the laugh. She built in those piles of baggage
with the rapidest symmetrical arrangement, to the admiration of Smith,
who stood wondering by, and did what he could to help her, with troubled
good-nature. She did not stop to make any sentimental reflections, or to
think of the thankless office in which she was about to confirm herself
beyond remedy by this sudden and precipitate step. Thinking had done
Nettie little good hitherto. She felt herself on her true ground again,
when she took to doing instead. The lamp burned dimly overhead, throwing
down a light confused with frost upon the hall, all encumbered with
the goods of the wandering family. Perhaps it was with a certain
unconscious symbolism that Nettie buried her own personal wardrobe
deep in the lowest depths, making that the foundation for all the after
superstructure. Smith stood by, ready to hand her anything she might
want, gazing at her with doubtful amazement. The idea of setting off to
Australia at a few days' notice filled him with respect and admiration.

"A matter of a three months' voyage," said Smith; "and if I might make
bold to ask, Miss, if the weather ain't too bad for anything, how will
you pass away the time on board ship when there ain't nobody to speak
to?--but, to be sure, the gentleman----"

"The gentleman is not going with us," said Nettie, peremptorily--"and
there are the children to pass away the time. My time passes too quick,
whatever other people's may do. Where is Mrs Smith, that I see nothing
of her to-night? Gone out!--how very odd she should go out now, of all
times in the world. Where has she gone, do you suppose? Not to be
ungrateful to you, who are very kind, a woman is, of course, twenty
times the use a man is, in most things. Thank you--not that;