The Newtown bee., 1897-03-05

should join the lad she had reared Only one old friend Mrs Scanlan, made half-laughing objection.
 "You're too handsome, my woman-a sight too handsome to go living in the house with young man, even if he was once your baby. Forty! You don't look it, no one will believe it; and the lad will be ruined as a family doctor. That's all about"
 A minx of girl expressed her opin- ion of Mary to friend of her own.
 "Well, Emily, my dear, if being good and gentle and kind can insure us a com plexion and eyes and figure like Miss Daly's at forty don't you think we ought to mend our ways?"
 Mary Daily sailed, the happiest woman in the world. Old Mamie, who went with her, knew her secret and approved
 IA finer and better woman couldn't put her comether on him." she said {; ''an' as for beauty, there isn't your like walks Patrick Street of a morning."
 Certainly in those days a strange beauty had come to Mary Daily. She was an object or extreme interest and ad. miration to her fellow-passengers She was gentle and curteous to all of them but it was plain that she liked her own company and her own thoughts best. She used to sit for hours looking out over the water with that light of love and joy on her face, and quite uncon- scious of the many looks directed her way. Sometimes she listened while Mamie talked of her lover, smiling hap 1 pily at the old woman's odd memories and imaginatiens. The days and nights went fast; but not fast enough for the bride of forty and her eager bridegroom, waiting for at the other end of the voyage.
 They were not many days from land when terrible thing happened. In the middle of the night the ship caught fire. There were boats enough for all, and every one got away from the ship. The boats kept together as long as they could; but the second night after the fire the boat in which Mary Daly and old Mamie were together, parted con- pany with the others.
 They drifted about all day in the burning sun, watching vainly for the sight of sail or the smoke of a steamer. The next day it was the same, and the next. The third day child died in the boat.
 The fourth day the water came to an end. Mary lay with her head in old Nannie's lap talking half deliriously of her boy who was waiting for her. To- ward evening she fell into stupor. The others looked at her with lack.luster eyes. It was better than going mad, which would be the lot of some of them very soon.
 The fifth day they were picked up by 8 passing steamer. Before that, one man had sprung overheard, and an. other lay dead in the bottom of the boat.
 Mary's stupor had passed into some. thing that looked like death, so like it that the doctor who came with the res- cuing party declared her dead. It was old Nannie's angry contradiction that made him reconsider his verdict. The old woman looked terrible enoueh h after the starvation and the thirst.
 \ sNo, no,'' she said vehemently; ssshe is alive, I tell you.'
 The doctor in half-pitying sympa thy returned to his efforts to resusciate her, and after time she began to show signs of life. She recovered more quickly than he had dared to hope. The rescuing ship was on her way to Australia. Before any of the other shipwrecked people were about, Mary