That there is—a homestead, and a home! For this is Sunshine, where the Rosses live—Peter Ross, and Catherine his wife. Twenty years ago, Peter, then already on the wrong side of thirty, and with indifferent health, came out from the Old Country; and, after years of toil and saving (for he never became strong, and never met with “luck”), took up this bit of tussock-land, and started to make a home. Many and many a year more, of unremitting toil and scraping and self-denial, it took to do it; but, at last, the little prudent hoard was large enough, Catherine, waiting still faithfully and hopefully while for her part she drudged along, earning a dull livelihood at Home, received at last her tardy summons in a letter that enclosed the passage-money; and the long journey, seventeen years long, did at last actually end in happiness and lovers’ meeting. The pair were wed, and settled down at Sunshine, to begin life. Peter was fifty years old, and Catherine forty-nine; yet it really was life that they began, for all that!
I dare say that the mistresses of some of the thriving homesteads which lie at no great distance from the Rosses’ place may have smiled to themselves and one another at some of the newcomer’s ways, when first they came to see her. Very likely, indeed, they smile still, and with a little superior pity, perhaps, at her infinitesimal bakings, the few pounds of butter she makes up every week, her careful selection of a basket of strawberries, or anxious packing of a box of eggs, to trade with at the store in town. And I dare say that their husbands, too, may sometimes get a little amusement out of Peter’s microscopic holding, his handful
