t when we get out there father
will be able to help in many ways, though I do not know at present what
they are. Anyhow, we shall have a house to live in, even if it is only a
log hut, and I have no doubt have plenty to eat and drink; and that is
more than we shall do if we stay here. I could not earn anything to
speak of here: the most I could expect to get would be ten shillings a
week as an office-boy. And as to your idea of a school, you might be
years before you got pupils; and, besides, when there are two men in a
family it would be shameful to depend upon a woman to keep them."

"Why do you think of New Zealand more than Canada, Wil?"

"Because, in the first place, the climate is a great deal pleasanter,
and, in the second place, I believe that as the passage-money is higher
the emigrants are of a better class, and we are likely to have more
pleasant neighbours--people that you and father can associate with--than
we should have if we went to a backwood clearing in Canada. Tom Fairfax
has an uncle in New Zealand, and I have heard him say there are lots of
officers in the army and people of that sort who have settled there. Of
course I know it is going to be hard work, and that it will be very
rough for you and father when we land at first, but I expect it will be
better after a time; and anyhow, mother, I do not think we can starve
there, and I feel sure that it will come to that if we stop here. At any
rate, you had better think it over.

"Of course if you hit on anything better I shall be ready to agree at
once; but whatever it is we must quite make up our minds together and
then tell father. But when we do tell him we shall have to say that we
are quite convinced that the plan we have fixed on is the only one that
offers a hope of success. Of course I do not expect that he will see it
as we do, but if we put it that if he can suggest anything better to be
done we will set about it at once, I think he's pretty certain to let
things go on as we arrange. I do not mean to speak disrespectfully of
father," he went on seeing that his mother's face was a little clouded
"but you know, mother, that people who are learned, scientific, and all
that sort of thing are very often bad hands at everyday matters. Sir
Isaac Newton, and lots of other fellows I have read about, were like
that; and though father is a splendid hand at anything to do with the
Britons or Danes, and can tell you the story of every old ruin in the
kin