mpetition.
When that came there was a falling off, but my young sister Mary and I
were faithful till the day when after nine years at the same school, I
went with Jessie to Wooden, to Aunt Mary's, to hear there that my
father was ruined, and had to leave Melrose and Scotland for ever, and
that we must all go to Australia. That was in April, 1839.

As I said, I had a very happy childhood. The death of my eldest sister
at 16, and of my youngest sister at two years old, did not sink into
the mind of a child as it did into that of my parents, and although
they were seriously alarmed about my health when I was 12 years old,
when I developed symptoms similar to those of Agnes at the same age, I
was not ill enough to get at all alarmed. I was annoyed at having to
stay away from school for three months. When the collapse came Jessie
had a dear friend of some years' standing, and I had one whom had known
only for some months, but I had spent a month with her in Edinburgh at
Christmas, 1838, and we exchanged letters weekly through the box which
came from Edinburgh with my brother John's, washing. It was too
expensive for us to write by the post. Well, neither of our friends
wrote a word to us. With regard to mine it was not to be wondered at
much--she was only 13--but the other was more surprising. It was not
till 1865 that an old woman told me that when Miss F. B. came to return
some books and music to her to give to my aunt in Melrose, "she just
sat in the chair and cried as if her heart would break." She was not
quite a free agent. Very few single women were free agents in 1839. We
were hopelessly ruined, our place would know us no more.

The only long holidays I had in the year I spent at Thornton Loch, in
East Lothian, 40 miles away. I did not know that my father was a heavy
speculator in foreign wheat, and I thought his keen interest in the
market in Mark lane was on account of the Thornton Loch crops, in which
first my grandfather and afterwards the three Maiden aunts were deeply
concerned. My mother's father, John Brodie, was one of the most
enterprising agriculturists in the most advanced district of Great
Britain. He won a prize of two silver salvers from the Highland Society
for having the largest area of drilled wheat sown. He was called up
twice to London to give evidence before Parliamentary committees on the
corn laws, and he naturally approved of them, because, with three large
farms held on 19 years' leases at w