find her match amongst the best in England. I was with her mother when
she was born--not a soul else--and put her into her first clothes,
that I helped to make; and a bonny one she was, even then, with her
black eyes, that stared up at me as much as to say: 'Who are you, I'd
like to know?' Dear, it seems like yesterday, and it's nigh twenty
years ago. All poor Sally Pennycuick's girls are good girls, and the
youngest is going to be handsome too. Rose, the third, is not at all
bad-looking; poor Mary--I don't know who she takes after. The
father was the one with the good looks; but Sally was a fine woman too.
Poor dear old Sally! I wish she was here to see that girl."

Mrs Urquhart and Mrs Pennycuick, plain, brave, working women of the
rough old times, wives of high-born husbands, incapable of companioning
them as they companioned each other, had been great friends. On them
had devolved the drudgery of the pioneer home-making without its
romance; they had had, year in, year out, the task of 'shepherding' two
headstrong and unthrifty men, who neither owned their help nor thanked
them for it--the inglorious life-work of so many obscure women--and
had strengthened each other's hands and hearts that had had so little
other support.

"Mrs. Pennycuick--she is not living, I presume?" Guthrie enticed the
garrulous lady to proceed.

"Dear, no. She died when Francie was a baby," and Mrs Urquhart gave the
details of her friend's last illness in full. "Deb was just a little
trot of a thing--her father's idol; he wouldn't allow her mother to
correct her the least bit, though she was a wilful puss, with a temper
of her own; ruled the house, she did, just as she does now. If she
hadn't had such a good heart, she'd have grown up unbearable. There