"Indeed can I, my leddy. Thanks to the Sunday school, I could read in the bible if I had one, without a blunder." "Well, Biddy," said Mrs. Sackville, who thought it a good opportunity to give a God-speed to the girl's pilgrimage--"here is a bible in my basket--take it, and may it be the guide of your life." Biddy poured forth her thanks in many a God-reward-ye, and then after hesitating for a moment, she said, "I wish my leddy would condescend to walk up here a bit, to a poor woman who needs a kind christian word, poor crater." Mrs. Sackville and the children followed Biddy to a tree which stood a little above the encampment of the Irish, where a woman was sitting on a log with a sick child in her arms, and a boy of five or six beside her. She was a middle-aged woman, with a face originally plain, and deeply seamed with the small-pox; but withal, there was an expression of honesty and goodness, and of deep sadness, that interested Mrs. Sackville, though at first it failed to draw the attention of the children from their good-humored blithe companion. "Does this woman belong to your company, Biddy?" "Bless you, no, my leddy."--"I thought not," said Mrs. Sackville, who was struck with the extreme neatness of the woman's appearance, which presented a striking contrast to all the Irish, even to our friend Biddy.--Her child's head was covered with a linen handkerchief--coarse and patched, but white as the driven snow. There was scarcely a thread of the original cloth in her children's clothes--neither was there a hole in them--their faces and hands were perfectly clean, and their hair neatly combed. "You seem to find it possible, my friend," said Mrs. Sackville, patting the little boy's face, "to keep your children clean in the most difficult circumstances." "I try my best, ma'am," replied the woman. "And a slave, my leddy," interposed Biddy, "she makes of herself for it. Do you know that when I offered this morning to stay by the childer while she took a bit of sleep, that instead of resting her soul and body, she went and washed her things in the river, and got leave to iron in the house yonder, and did it all as particular as it might have been done for you, my leddy." The poor woman was wetting the sick child's lips from a cup of water that stood by her; and she took no notice of Biddy's remark. Mrs. Sackville inquired into the particulars of the child's sickness, which she thought would yield to some common restoratives which she had at hand; and just as she was dispatching Julia for the dressing case which contained them, a little rugged impish looking boy came towards them, throwing himself heels over head, with a segar in his mouth, which he continued smoking while he was making his somersets.--"Come, come, Goody Barton," said he, without heeding Mrs. Sackville's presence, "come, we must be up and moving. If we don't get over in this boat, I shall disappoint the company at Chippewa to-night."