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"Who that should view the small beginnings of some persons could imagine or prognosticate those vast increases of fortune that have afterwards followed them." --SOUTH.

THE green door of communication between the Misses Cavendish's cabin and the adjoining cabin, occupied by their parents, was hooked back. The girls were on their knees before their trunks, inspecting the creases in black cashmere dresses that were to be brought out fresh for the arrival in Melbourne. Mrs. Cavendish's voice, from the neighbouring cabin, was heard ejaculating at intervals, but as the coherence of her exclamations was somewhat marred by the fact that she was embedded among some house--linen she was "turning over," and as her words seemed to be directed at no one in particular, but appeared simply an outlet for strong feeling with reference to some mildewed pillow-cases, they continued their conversation unheeded, with only such breaks as were absolutely necessary to enable them to give vent to an interjection of acquiescence or sympathy, when the voice from within their mother's cabin took a more decided inflexion.

"Shall you be pleased or sorry that the journey is over?" asked Margaret, not looking directly at her sister, but intent upon the crumpled cashmere that she was now shaking vigorously with both hands, as she knelt before the trunk.

"Oh! glad!--but I don't know, either. Why do you ask?" said Sara, with something of a questioning suspicion in her glance as she turned her head.

Margaret began to rummage among the lowest layer of clothes in the bottom of her trunk. She had a face that was given to flushing upon the very shortest notice, and probably the blood had rushed to her head now. Her cheeks had reddened considerably before she replied, "Oh! for a reason. I wish I knew how you felt about it. Aren't there some things you'll miss?"

"You'll miss them more, I think," said Sara curtly.

"Perhaps so; but my missing them won't matter to anybody," rejoined Margaret promptly.

"Nor will mine, that I know of."

"Oh! Sara!" ("Yes, mamma--a dreadful pity.") A deplorable cry of "Just think--your pa's collars all green--there's a pity for you," called forth this irrelevant exclamation. "Oh! Sara!" reiterated Margaret.

There's a way of saying "Oh!" which simply amounts to giving the lie direct, as you may easily find out by noting the inevitable remonstrance, indignant, or self-defensive, that such an "Oh!" invariably calls forth.

"Well, it won't," said Sara, with unnecessary emphasis. "It won't matter to anybody. I don't know what makes you think it will. I do wish, Margaret, you wouldn't hint at things... I might talk at you--if I chose!"

"Not in that way," said Margaret quietly. "I don't think it'll make the smallest difference to anybody on board how soon the voyage comes to an end--as far as I am concerned."

It was impossible to detect even a flavour of bitterness in her voice. From the time when Margaret was eight years old--an old-fashioned little girl, with bright cheeks, and a chin whose upward tendency had given her even then a resemblance to a quaint little old woman--from the time when she had received her baby sister into her arms--she had taken, as it were, the second place herself.

Sara coaxed or coerced her from the beginning, her beauty carrying, even in her own family, a sort of dominion with it that was yielded to with astonishing readiness, considering the slender reasons apart from it that she could most often advance for getting what she wanted. Yet Margaret never dreamed of revolting against her own secondary position. The delighted pride with which she had first heard Sara lisp the inane little rhymes she had taught her took new forms as Sara grew to womanhood; but a form tinctured with jealousy, or a begrudging of the triumphs that Sara's beauty and witchery were always gaining her, never once poisoned Margaret's mind. I am not sure that sort of fate is always to be deplored--self being, no doubt, the most engrossing, but at the same time the most tormenting subject for solicitude in existence.

Away from Sara, Margaret would hardly have been called plain--any one might have conceded that she was pleasant-looking. The oddest thing was to trace the family likeness between the girls, and see where Margaret's face stopped short of beauty and Sara's blossomed into it. Sara, it is true, was hardly twenty, and Margaret might have been anywhere between twenty and thirty. But with regard to the family likeness, one might almost have supposed the sisters to have been cast in the same mould at birth and handed over to a magic artificer--who would have tried his "'prentice hand" on Margaret, and turned out his finished achievement in Sara. That fatal little upward curve of the pointed chin gave Margaret, from the days when she was in short frocks, an old-maidish air. Her figure was neither so tall nor so finely developed as her sister's, and, despite her kindly blue eyes and soft brown hair, a susceptible skin, that was apt to grow unduly heated and to make her feel nervous in the sun or after dinner, was in itself a foil to Sara's faultlessly clear complexion.

If ever so wild a wish as the possibility of arraying herself for a few short instants in Sara's body had occurred to Margaret, it would have been when the children's service was over on Sunday afternoons, and the Rev. Mr. Lydiat turned, with the look she knew so well, to the place where her sister was sitting. His way of saying, "I am so grateful to you for helping me, Miss Sara," with reference, perhaps, to the closing hymn, or because Sara had held by the skirts the particular M'Bride that always fell off the skylight while the text was being read, seemed to call for a rejoinder that Margaret would have liked to make. Besides she felt every word that had been said. In Sara's place she could have followed up remarks that opened a vista of ideas such as Margaret could comprehend and discuss. But then the remarks were not addressed to her, and not being in Sara's body she could only sit with flushed cheeks, a little apart, and wish that she might prompt her sister's replies. It is certainly among the unfair advantages that beauty takes to itself that a pair of fine eyes should be credited with volumes of meaning, and a little "yes" or "no," pronounced in a tone that asked for more, accompanied by one of those sweetly encouraging glances that came from Sara without any conscious artifice on her part, seemed quite enough to convince Mr. Lydiat that she had penetrated the very depths of his meaning.

"There's mamma again," said Sara, not wishing to agree in too direct a manner with her sister's inference that the end of the journey could give any one on board a pang. "It's the shirt-fronts now! Never mind, mamma," in a key that long board-ship practice had pitched to the exact carrying of the words no farther than the next cabin; "papa can get new ones in Melbourne, I suppose. Uncle Piper won't examine his shirt-fronts directly we land." Then in her ordinary low-toned voice, "Isn't it deplorable, Maggie--I wish we could begin the journey over again. Oh no, not for the sentimental part of it, but one's things are so villanously packed. I can't call it anything else. Only look at the back of my cashmere polonaise." She held it up in front of her, frowning. Even a frown did not seem to affect Sara's face as it does more homely countenances, imparting rather a masculine semi-tragic air to her handsome profile. "And I can't put on my jacket" (plaintively). "It makes me look about as old as mamma. What do you think--eh? Can't you make a suggestion, Maggie" (impatiently); "you're looking at your own things as complacently as if you were the only passenger on board ship that had to be landed at all."

"I wasn't thinking of my clothes," said Maggie, her colour rising as usual; "but I wouldn't make such a trouble of it if I were you, Sara. Captain Chuck says we can't get in before to-morrow night. We're only off that cape--what is it called--oh, the Otway, he said, and the wind might change; and, anyhow, if we hang up our things some of the crumples must come out."

"Well, we'll try it," said Sara discontentedly, rising at the same time with effort, and quietly hanging her polonaise on the only two available hooks in the cabin; "I suppose it's out of self-respect one doesn't want to look as if one's things had been tied in a bag. I don't care a bit what Uncle Piper thinks. I don't believe parvenus ever know whether women are properly dressed. What a pity for us, isn't it, that it should be mamma's brother instead of papa's who made the money. I know beforehand I shall hate him, and I dare say our cousin and all his set are just as bad. Oh dear, why are some people so unlucky in their relations?"

The ill-luck perhaps was too heavy a burden to be borne standing. After spreading her polonaise on the hooks with elaborate care, Sara stretched her finely turned arms, unbuttoned the front of her board-ship dress of dark-grey cloth, and clambering on her berth, propped up the pillows and settled herself back with hands clasped behind the back of her head, in an attitude of luxurious ease, looking, with her polished throat uncovered, like a beautiful Bacchante who was on her proper behaviour.

"You're such an unsatisfactory person, Maggie," she went on; "I believe it's a mania with you to like common people. You don't seem to understand the least bit how hard it is to go to a new country and find yourself dragged down by a whole heap of vulgar relations. I suppose there are some people worth knowing in Melbourne--but you'll see! We'll be swallowed up in the Piper set. I shall be accaparéed by the cousin. And papa--oh, won't he hate it! Papa'll have to toady to Uncle Piper, and pretend to be enraptured with his fine things all day long."

"I'd like papa to hear you say so," retorted Margaret, who was scanning the cabin in the vain search for a place wherein to hang her dress.

"Well, isn't it true? Isn't papa the gentleman and poor, and isn't Uncle Piper the parvenu and rich?"

"It doesn't follow that he wants to be toadied to."

"Yes, it does. All those self-made people are bumptious and stuck-up. They wouldn't care for their money if they couldn't make a display with it. Really, I almost wish sometimes I'd stayed behind and trusted to my wits."

"That's the penalty of being so exceptional," said Margaret, advancing the statement as a plain truth, without a shade of irony. "You ought to have been born in a palace, Sara--you always put your surroundings in the shade. Now, I feel rather pleased to think we're going to a homely old uncle, who'll treat us, perhaps, to a share in his good things for mamma's sake. He must have a kind feeling for us all, or he wouldn't have offered to find papa a post in the Government, or have sent half our passage-money, or anything."

"Oh, I suppose he wants somebody to show off to. His wives are dead, aren't they?"

"Wives? Uncle Piper isn't a Mormon!"

"Well, he's had two, at least. Mamma said so herself. I suppose one died first--Oh dear! there's mamma exclaiming again! Do pacify her, Margaret. Tell her to come in here and tell us about Uncle Piper. And just give me the pillow off your berth, will you? My head's quite in a hole."

Margaret was accustomed to be ordered about in this regal fashion. Had she not said in perfect good faith that Sara should have been born in a palace? And if you imply that your companion is a queen by nature, can you be astonished if she occasionally mistakes you for her subject? She shook up the pillows and re-arranged them behind her sister's head, moving her tumbled hair out of the way as tenderly as if Sara had been a victim to rheumatic fever, instead of a young woman of almost plethoric exuberance of health.

In the meantime, the ejaculations in the neighbouring cabin were gathering in intensity, and Sara had the ill grace to laugh as her mother came breathless through the door of communication, staggering under the weight of the injured clothing.

"It's shameful!" said poor Mrs. Cavendish, gasping. "Your pa's guernseys! did you ever see the like? I knew all along the water was coming in. I said so; now, didn't I say so? I said so to the carpenter with my own lips, I said"--

"Yes, mamma, you said so!" interrupted Sara, not lifting her head from her pillow. "We know you said so."

It was Sara's invariable way of checking any plaints on her mother's part to agree with her tersely, and nothing short of unusual exasperation could move good-tempered Mrs. Cavendish to resent the implied rebuke.

Margaret, meanwhile, had taken the heap of linen out of her mother's arms, and laid it on her berth.

"It is a shame, mother!" she said, in that full voice of sympathy that strikes so gratefully on the irritated senses, as proving that one's feeling of injury is at least entered into, and one's just indignation shared. "I think the captain should be spoken to about it, or at least we'll show the carpenter what it's come to. I remember he wouldn't believe the sea worked in at that place. But don't you think" (spreading the things out with a hopeful air) "it'll come out with the first washing? Do let me help you with the rest of them by-and-by, and stay with us a little now; we want to ask you ever so many things about Uncle Piper."

Mrs. Cavendish was especially fond of what she called "a little family confab." She already saw the mildewed stains fading away in an imaginary lather, as she sat herself comfortably down on the square trunk that Margaret had covered with a shawl and pushed against the cabin partition for her mother's greater comfort.

The first glance at her was sufficient to determine the source of Sara's beauty. She was verging at this time upon fifty, and if you could have studied her head alone, you would have found a model for the countenance of a goddess. It was from her mother that Sara inherited the delicious tone of her healthy pallor, her eyes of deep blue, and eyebrows marked by a single arching line. I suppose the lastingness of their beauty was one of the chief attributes of the charms of a goddess, and I should imagine that there were certain lines in Mrs. Cavendish's face that must remain beautiful to the end. Such, for instance, as the peculiar cut of her narrow nostrils and small mouth that curved downwards on either side, the finish of the firm chin, of which the perfect shape, full and slightly advancing, as if it had been boldly chiselled by a master hand, had developed in Margaret's case into a form that caricatured it. Mrs. Cavendish affected a cap, of the jaunty make known as "Dolly Varden"--a mere little knot of dark blue frippery, surmounting a square of white net. An antique goddess in a "Dolly Varden." Her daughters should have saved her from such vandalism. She never looked better than when she was going to wash her face, and had screwed her still abundant black hair, faintly marked with grey, into a knot at the back of her classic head. But you must be content to stop short at her head. The torse was much too ample to serve as a celestial model. The solidity of her mother's bust and the amplitude of her waist were often a matter of secret alarm to Sara, who was inclined, as the trainers say, "to put on flesh" with a facility that caused her many a qualm in the enjoyment of board-ship tarts.

And another quality at which you must stop short was the voice. No after association can give an educated intonation, a thing which must be acquired, like a foreign language, when the human being is in the initiative period that marks its nearer connection with an earlier form of being. But it was a voice that had sounded melodious enough in Mr. Cavendish's fastidious ears nearly thirty years ago. Perhaps it was the recollection of that early wooing, conducted on his part with a kind of old school gallantry, which had touched with a wondrous charm the simple heart of the plebeian girl--that helped to maintain her inviolable loyalty to her husband through ups and downs innumerable. The girls were accustomed to look upon "your pa" as their mother's watchword. If the poor thing happened to be laid up for a day, her first warning was, "Don't neglect your pa!" When small domestic privations, consequent upon a forgetfulness on the part of Mr. Cavendish of the claims of vulgar tradespeople, were submitted to in the little household, her one fear was, "Your pa'll be taking it to heart!" Mr. Cavendish's aristocratic nature was not devoid of the commonplace tendency I once heard attributed to husbands in general--a tendency to look upon their wives very much in the light of fetishes--to be treated as the savage African treats his little idol--that is to say, to be petted and made much of when things are going well with him, and to be severely knocked about when anything goes wrong.

But though the girls had frequently seen their mother harassed, and had even detected an irrepressible quivering about the corners of her down--curved mouth, they had never heard her say a word that savoured of resentment towards "your pa."

Yet hers was the better brain, the sounder heart. Only clear common sense and womanly devotion, unsupported by self-assertion, are like unset gems. The setting that brings them into prominence may be little better than dross, but without it any other than a skilled lapidary would assuredly pass them by.

The only defensive weapon Mrs. Cavendish ever flourished when the fetish had met with especially rough treatment was couched in an allusion to "brothers." There could be no question that, without her brother Tom, those little domestic lapses already alluded to would have stretched into very yawning gulfs indeed--whereas Mr. Cavendish's only brother, of whom he found occasion to say at least twenty times a day "my brother the bishop," had not scrupled to take the silver teapot as security for the loan of a very trifling sum, which, as a precaution that had stronger associations in Mrs. Cavendish's mind with a pawnbroker's shop and three gilt balls than with an episcopal palace and a cross of gold, had led her to make the unpardonable surmise "that the church was a poor business, after all."

Now, Tom Piper's business had not been a poor one--albeit he had started in life with just three pounds seventeen and sixpence to his credit. His father had been a small shopkeeper who had failed, paid his debts, and died--a career so much more ignominious in Mr. Cavendish's eyes than the life of a defaulter in a wholesale and respectable way, that he never alluded to his father-in-law, in conversation with his wife, without stigmatising him as "your unfortunate father."

Tom had much more than his father's shrewdness, and perhaps not quite so much of his scrupulosity. Finding himself in this impoverished plight, at the age of five and twenty, with his beautiful sister Elizabeth dependent on him, he called up his energy bravely. These two were the only representatives of the struggling Piper family. Tom housed his sister as nursery governess with some people that he described as "good marks," in the sense that her wages would be punctually paid every quarter. But "good marks" constituting a very impersonal recommendation, Elizabeth did not find that she had fallen among kindly souls. Tom had worked his way to Australia, where, as he wrote to his sister, "he had started butchering, and saw his way to making a good thing of it. In the meantime, she had better stick to the old game of teaching, and stay where she was."

Elizabeth's docile nature would have led her to follow this well-meant advice to the letter had not a sudden and delightful change offered itself. Young Mr. Cavendish came to stay as a guest with her employers. His vapidness was so hidden under his air of distinction that if often passed current for depth. His good family tone, as unattainable without certain associations as the sinewy shininess of a racer without a long course of training; his courtly deference to women; the very set of his clothes, never brand-new, like Tom's go-to-meeting suit, or worn at the seams, like his working one; the way in which he pronounced the very commonest of words, made him something distinct from all other men, even from those whom she had heard Tom call half-jeeringly the "nobs." And this Eros actually came down from his height to worship her! How it might have ended there is no saying, for Elizabeth's beauty was of a kind to take a strong and instant hold upon the imagination. But her innocence was so transparently palpable, and her unprotectedness so remarkable, that Mr. Cavendish succumbed to the one chivalrous and unalloyed impulse of his life, and married her. That in so doing he was a renegade to his race--of the house of Devonshire, according to his own showing (though it must be allowed that his particular branch of it had never been in a very flourishing condition)--he was fully and completely convinced. Yet, if there is a nobility distinct from the possession of a genealogical tree, I think he was never truer to it than when he "lowered himself" by his marriage.

It was an odd coincidence that with the one exception of birth--the Pipers, exclusive of that celebrated individual who performed the feat of picking the peck of pepper which afterwards disappeared so unaccountably, never having made much of a name for themselves in England--the young husband and wife were placed in very similar circumstances. Both were poor, both orphans, both acknowledged an elder brother--with the difference that Mr. Cavendish could say, "My brother the bishop;" while Mrs. Cavendish was constrained to say, "My brother the butcher." The benefits conferred by the bishop, though priceless, no doubt, considered from a spiritual point of view, had hardly the solidity of the tokens sent by the butcher. In fact, distant and powerful connections, whose influence, seconded by the happy chance of his preaching before a prince, had raised Mr. Cavendish's brother to the rank of a spiritual lord, absorbed such family regard as he had to dispose of. Whereas, his own brains and hands being the only helps to which Mrs. Cavendish's brother owed allegiance, he found room for taking to his heart in a substantial way "his sister Bess, and that fine husband of hers, whom he hoped to set eyes on one of these days." How ungrudgingly he had acted upon this feeling, during his rise to wealth and power in Australia, the Cavendish family in England best knew. If Mr. Cavendish had not been strongly tinctured with the aristocratic failing of imagining that in the world's economy grosser clay should work for pedigreed humanity, he would never have spoken other than with grateful warmth of his distant brother-in-law. Poor Mrs. Cavendish's tenderest point, with the one exception of "your pa," was Uncle Piper--his goodness, his constant and generous recollection of her. It was with the adroitness prompted by love that Margaret had touched upon the theme of Uncle Piper, as a salve for the contemplation of the mildewed shirt-fronts; her mother desiring nothing better than to hold forth upon his deserts.