"If you mean are they worn out, overworked women? Yes, I believe so. How
can they help it indeed, when one hundred a year is a very ordinary
amount for a clergyman's income?"

Mr. Percy shrugged his shoulders. "I agree with you entirely. No man
ought to marry under those circumstances. But I wish you would enlighten
me on one point,--what are shanties?"

"Log-houses of the roughest possible kind, such as are built in the
woods for the gangs of lumberers; that is, you know, the men who cut
down the trees and prepare them for shipping."

"But Mrs. Bayne said something about shanties near here."

"Yes. Beyond their house, there lies, along the river, a swamp of no
great extent, which ought to have been drained long ago. Beyond that, on
the edge of the bush, is a large saw-mill, and the families of the men
employed at this mill live in shanties close by. Every spring and autumn
the sickness among them is terrible, and sometimes there are bad cases
all through the summer. But you may imagine what it is among those
people in their wretched damp, unventilated homes, when even the Baynes
suffer as poor little Nina is doing now, and did most of the spring."

"Delightful country!" said Mr. Percy, "and people positively like to
live here."

"Yes!" replied Mrs. Bellairs, with spirit, "and with good cause. As for
what I have been telling you, has not England been quite as bad? I have
heard that in Lincolnshire, and the adjoining counties, not a lifetime
ago, ague was as prevalent as in our worst districts. The same means