She looked into my face with that pleased look that put me in mind of her when she was a little child ‘and used to come toddling up to me, staring and smiling all over her face the moment she saw me. Now she was a grown woman, and a sweet-looking one, too. I couldn’t lift her up and kiss her as I used to do, but I felt as if I should like to do it all the same. She was the only creature in the whole world, I think, that liked me better than Jim. I’d been trying to drive all thoughts of her out of my heart, seeing the tangle I’d got into in more ways than one; but now the old feeling which had been a part of me ever since I’d grown up came rushing back stronger than ever. I was surprised at myself, and looked queer I daresay.

Then Aileen laughed, and Jim comes to the rescue and says—

“Dick doesn’t remember you, Gracey. You’ve grown such a swell, too. You can’t be the little girl we used to carry on our backs.”

“Dick remembers very well,” she says, and her very voice was ever so much fuller and softer, “don’t you, Dick?” and she looked into my face as innocent as a child. “I don’t think he could pull me out out of the water and carry me up to the cottage now.”

“You tumble in and we’ll try,” says Jim; “first man to keep you for good—eh, Gracey? It’s fine hot weather, and Aileen shall see fair play.”

“You’re just as saucy as ever, Jim,” says she, blushing and smiling. “I see George coming, so I must go and fetch in dinner. Aileen’s going to help me instead of mother. You must tell us all about your travels when we sit down.”

When George came in he began to talk to make up for lost time, and told us where he had been—a long way out in some new back country, just taken up with sheep. He had got a first-rate paying price for his carriage out, and had brought back and delivered a full load of wool.

“I intend to do it every year for a bit,” he said. “I can breed and feed a good stamp of draught horse here. I pay drivers for three waggons and drive the fourth myself. It pays first-rate so far, and we had very fair feed all the way there and back.”

“Suppose you get a dry season,” I said; “how will that be?”

“We shall have to carry forage, of course; but then carriage will be higher, and it will come to the same thing. I don’t like being so long away from home; but it pays first-rate, and I think I see a way to its paying better still.”