Postmaster-General, the Surveyor-General, and the Private Secretary.
Thus I earned three guineas a month. I don't recollect taking holidays,
except a week at Christmas. I enjoyed the work, and I was proud of the
payment. My mother said she never felt the bitterness of poverty after
I began to earn money, and the shyness which, in spite of all her
instructions and encouragement, I had felt with all strangers,
disappeared when I felt independent. When a girl is very poor, and
feels herself badly dressed, she cannot help being shy, especially if
she has a good deal of Scotch pride. I think mother felt more sorry for
me in those early days than for the others, because I was so ambitious,
and took religious difficulties so hard. How old I felt at 17. Indeed,
at 14 I felt quite grown up. In 1843 I felt I had begun the career in
Australia that I had anticipated in Scotland. I was trusted to teach
little girls, and they interested me, each individual with a
difference. I had seen things I had written in print. If I was one of
the oldest in feeling of the young folk in South Australia in my teens,
I am the youngest woman in feeling in my eighties; so I have had
abundant compensation.




CHAPTER IV.



LOVERS AND FRIENDS.


It is always supposed that thoughts of love and marriage are the chief