Elsie as comfortable a tea as her means would allow. To
Elsie it seemed a perfect feast.

While they are waiting I must take the opportunity of telling all that
had been found out about the Murdochs, and how they came to take charge
of the children. Lucy Murdoch had been, as Meg said, quite a poor girl,
living in one of the miserable closes in which the old town of Edinburgh
abounds. She was very pretty and clever, but naturally inclined to
deceit and cunning. When she was about seventeen she went to service,
but could never keep a place, because she was impertinent, and so fond
of dressing herself up in fine clothes that she at last began to steal
things from the ladies she lived with in order to gratify her vanity.

Her friends said she looked like any lady, and this so pleased the vain
creature that she tried to pass for one wherever she could, giving
herself great airs in shops she was sent to and when walking out of
doors. At last it was found that she had been to a shop in Edinburgh and
ordered some things in the name of a young lady, in whose mother's house
she had been a servant. After this she disappeared from Edinburgh, and
her friends saw nothing of her for many years.

When they heard of her again, she was married. She came back dressed as
a smart lady, and looking and speaking very much like one. She had been
in London, and had picked up all sorts of fine ways. Her husband was
just such another as herself: they both disliked honest work, but lived
by their cunning.

One of their tricks was to go to a grand hotel where there were rich
people, make the acquaintance of some wealthy lady or gentleman,
skilfully manage to rob the unsuspicious individuals of any money they
might have with them, and then depart, letting the suspicion fall on
some unfortunate servant.

Just before they had met Elsie and Duncan they had been staying at a
very fashionable resort in the Highlands, where Lucy Murdoch, by her
dashing manner and profuse liberality, made a great many friends and was
much admired. There happened to be among the company an Australian
gentleman just arrived in England, who had brought with him a
pocket-book full of notes, which he perhaps intended to pay into an
English bank. The gentleman, being boastful and proud of his money, gave
broad hints of the wealth he carried with him to Lucy Murdoch and her
husband, whom he thought very nice people, and so much more friendly to
a foreigner than the cold, pro