ight be here about Christmas; but
he wasn't sure. And so you saved Miss Falkland from being killed off her
horse, Jim? Tell me all about it, like a good boy, and what sort of a
looking young lady is she?'

'All right,' said Jim. 'I'll unload the story bag before we get through;
there's a lot in there yet; but I want to look at you and hear you talk
just now. How's George Storefield?'

'Oh! he's just the same good, kind, steady-going fellow he always was,'
says she. 'I don't know what we should do without him when you're away.
He comes and helps with the cows now and then. Two of the horses got
into Bargo pound, and he went and released them for us. Then a storm
blew off best part of the roof of the barn, and the bit of wheat would
have been spoiled only for him. He's the best friend we have.'

'You'd better make sure of him for good and all,' I said. 'I suppose
he's pretty well-to-do now with that new farm he bought the other day.'

'Oh! you saw that,' she said. 'Yes; he bought out the Cumberers. They
never did any good with Honeysuckle Flat, though the land was so good.
He's going to lay it all down in lucerne, he says.'

'And then he'll smarten up the cottage, and sister Aileen 'll go over,
and live in it,' says Jim; 'and a better thing she couldn't do.'

'I don't know,' she said. 'Poor George, I wish I was fonder of him.
There never was a better man, I believe; but I cannot leave mother yet,
so it's no use talking.' Then she got up and went in.

'That's the way of the world,' says Jim. 'George worships the ground she
treads on, and she can't make herself care two straws about him. Perhaps
she will in time. She'll have the best home and the best chap in the
whole district if she does.'

'There's a deal of "if" in this world,' I said; 'and "if" we're "copped"
on account of that last job, I'd like to think she and mother had some
one to look after them, good weather and bad.'

'We might have done that, and not killed ourselves with work either,'
said Jim, rather sulkily for him; and he lit his pipe and walked off
into the bush without saying another word.

I thought, too, how we might have been ten times, twenty times, as happy
if we'd only kept on steady ding-dong work, like George Storefield,
having patience and seeing ourselves get better off--even a little--year
by year. What had he come to? And what lay before us? And though we were
that fond of poor mother and Aileen that we would have done anything in