This page has been validated.
A WEDDING AT BRANXHOLM.
195

"Mr. Lindsay is satisfied, however," said George, "and you can judge for yourself. I have brought the wool down to-day, and it looks very respectable."

"I know the place well by Mr. Lufton's description. He would not have parted with it if it had been worth keeping."

"It did not suit him to keep it, but it suited Mr. Lindsay to buy," said George. "I'll not say that it is a garden of Eden, but an industrious man can make a living on it."

Although George had succeeded in gaining the ear of the daughter, he felt eclipsed in the eyes of the old people by this rather dictatorial Scotchman, who "cracked of horses, craps, and kye," and sheep too, to the goodman, and spoke to Mrs. Lindsay of his aged mother in Scotland, of whom he had been for many years the stay and the pride—a fact of which he was rather boastful.

Now and then a speech was addressed to Jessie herself, which was meant to be insinuating, but which Jessie only laughed at and turned off. George had wished to go over the accounts of the station (which he had kept as methodically as he could) with Mr. Lindsay and Allan; but McCallum wished to audit the accounts, and to assist the Lindsays with his