would be to marry that lad Hamilton, and land herself in misery."
"I don't think so. I think she has seen her folly. They must wait till they have an income, and till they get her father's approval; but I do not know that it would be a wise thing to bring her back here after what has occurred."
"Where is her father?" I asked: "could he not be consulted?"
"He is in the Arctic regions," said Miss Isabel.
"The Arctic regions!" I exclaimed.
"He has been gone for three years, and it is expected the expedition may be home within this year. He is the naturalist of the party," said Euphemia.
"Men who go to the Arctic regions go with their lives in their hands," I said.
"And for no practical end," said Miss Isabel severely. "Supposing they ever reach either the North or the South Pole, who's to be the better for it?"
"My sister has no love of adventure, you see," said Miss Euphemia.
"Adventure!" said Miss Isabel—"impious and suicidal curiosity would be a better name for it."
"I confess," said I, "I should like to peep over the ice-wall into the polar basin: especially would I like to see the charming country at the South Pole, and what kind of people live there. But surely Mr. Bird would make some settlement or arrangement about his daughter before he left."
"Well, you see, her aunt was living, and likely to live, at that time. So far as money is concerned, she'll have plenty when she is of age. She is her aunt's heir, and her father's should she survive him. Her father's lawyers have her affairs in their hands."
"Then," I said, "they would be the people to refer to."
"About money, but as to her place of residence, that must be left to herself: if she wishes to come back we shall be happy to receive her, although my own impression is she would be better elsewhere."
"With me, do you think, if she cared to remain?"
"Certainly."
"Do you know anything of me?" I asked.
"Yes. When we got your note I remembered that one of our servants, who has been with us for years, had a cousin in your town, and I asked her if she knew your name. 'Perfectly,' she said: 'my cousin is servant with them, and is a fixture, I suppose.' That gave us complete confidence: indeed, your note was the only one we replied to out of the seventeen. There was only one other I thought of answering, but waited till I heard from you."
"It was curious how so many answered," I said.
"Well, if you were more in the public way you would not think it curious: you would come to know a good many things. Your answer and another, as I have said, we picked out as genuine and to the purpose. Four others were about mysterious lodgers over thirty years of age, and two of mysterious lodgers who were men, and the other ten were worthless—from persons who had no end in view but to get a carte sent to them."
"What possible purpose would that serve them?" I asked.
"No good purpose. Possibly to gratify curiosity, or to sell, more likely."
"Sell!" I said. "Who would buy it, or what would they get for it?"
"A shilling or sixpence, perhaps; or they might get a dozen or two coarse ones struck off from it, and sell them at a country fair as the portrait of any one in the mouths of the public at the moment: if there was a striking shipwreck, as the wife of the captain, or any poisoning case, as one of the victims. You have no idea of what is done, and you can't be too cautious in dealing with the world."
Not having had many dealings with the world, I knew little of either its wickedness or its shifts, and had no desire to know more.
"We judged them," said Miss Isabel, "or at least some of them, from the composition and spelling. Not, however, that these are always infallible guides. I remember on one occasion getting a
