"So this is my old friend's daughter!" the farmer had cried out.
"And you're Mr. Scarsdale, are you?" answered the girl, between fits of intermittent, almost hysterical laughter.
"Eh? Yes, yes; I'm Mr. Teesdale, and this is my daughter Arabella. You are to be sisters, you two."
The visitor turned to Arabella and gave her a sounding kiss upon the lips.
"And mayn't I have one too?" old Teesdale asked. "I'm that glad to see you, my dear, and you know you're to look upon me like a father as long as you stay in Australia. Thank you, Miriam. Now I feel as if you'd been here a week already!"
Mr. Teesdale had received as prompt and as hearty a kiss as his daughter before him.
"Mrs. Teesdale is busy, but she'll come directly," he went on to explain. "Do you know what she's doing? She's getting your room ready, Miriam. We knew that you had landed, and I've spent the whole day hunting for you in town. Just to think that you should have come out by yourself after all! But our John William was here a minute ago. John William, what are you doing?"
"Cleaning my gun," said the young man, coming from behind his door, greasy rag in hand.
"Nay, come! You finished that job long ago. Come and shake hands with Miriam. Look, here she is, safe and sound, and come out all by herself!"
"I'm very glad to see you," said the son of the house, advancing, dirty palms foremost, "but I'm sorry I can't shake hands!"
She had taken a swinging step forward, and the red fringe was within a foot of his startled face, when she tossed back her head with a hearty laugh.
"No, I think I won't. You're too old and you're not old enough--see?"
"John William 'll be three-and-thirty come January," said Mr. Teesdale gratuitously.
"Yes? That's ten years older than me," answered the visitor with equal candour. "Exactly ten!"
"Nay, come--not exactly ten," the old gentleman said, with some gravity, for he was a great stickler for the literal truth; "only seven or eight, I understood from your father?"
The visitor coloured, then pouted, and then burst out laughing as she exclaimed, "You oughtn't to be so particular about ladies' ages! Surely two or three years is near enough, isn't it? I'm ashamed of you, Mr. Teesdale; I really am!" And David received such a glance that he became exceedingly ashamed of himself; but the smile that followed it warmed his old heart through and through, and reminded him, he thought, of Miriam's mother.