"No, they did not; but if it's any satisfaction to you to know it, Mrs. Phillips has had a tour on the Continent, and has had a lady's-maid."
"A lady's-maid," said Mrs. Peck; "well! well! and the children, I suppose, are being educated up to the nines?"
"They took both the governess and the lady's-maid with them to Melbourne," said Mr. Dempster. "They were sisters, and very superior young ladies. In fact, to my taste, Mrs. Frankland, the lady's-maid was more charming than the mistress; not so regularly handsome—but very lovely—while as to intelligence and refinement there was no comparison. If she had been a dozen of years older I might have been a little presumptuous."
"Was this Mrs. Phillips so very far behind as that her maid was so superior to her?" asked Mrs. Frankland.
"It happened that these sisters were the young ladies of whom, even in these distant parts, you may have heard something; who were brought up to inherit a large property in the south of Scotland, by a very eccentric uncle, who left everything he had to a son whom nobody had ever heard of before, and left the girls absolutely penniless."
"Was not their name Melville?" asked Mrs. Peck, eagerly and fiercely.
"Yes," replied Mr. Dempster, astonished to find his chatty communications to his old friend, Mrs. Frankland, taken up in this way by this unprepossessing-looking stranger. "Yes, their name was Melville, and I never in my life met with more amiable, more intelligent, or better-principled girls."
"I saw about it in the papers," said Mrs. Peck, endeavouring to subdue her delight and exultation at the idea of the girls she wished so much to come in contact with being so near her as Melbourne. "I took a great interest in it. I like these romances of real life. And so, Mrs. Phillips is up, and these girls are down, and glad to eat the bitter bread of service. It is very amusing. Was Mrs. Phillips much taken up with them on account of their misfortunes?"
"I do not know," said Mr. Dempster, drily. "If you have served Mrs. Phillips you will know that she is not the same at all times."
"Then there was a large party of them on board; a servant, no doubt, and these two Melville girls, and the children?" said Mrs. Peck.