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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 45683
   :PG.Title: The Wonder-Child
   :PG.Released: 2014-05-25
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Ethel Turner
   :MARCREL.ill: Gordon Browne
   :DC.Title: The Wonder-Child
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1901
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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THE WONDER-CHILD
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      Cover art

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      :alt: 'HERMIE.' (*See page 134.*)

      'HERMIE.' (See page `134`_.)

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      THE WONDER-CHILD

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      An Australian Story

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      BY

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      ETHEL TURNER

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      (MRS. H. R. CURLEWIS)

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      Author of 'Seven Little Australians,' 'The Camp
      at Wandinong,' 'The Story of a Baby,' 'Three
      Little Maids,' etc.

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   ..

   |  'The common problem, yours, mine, every one's,
   |  Is, not to fancy what were fair in life,
   |  Provided it could be,—but finding first
   |  What may be, then find how to make it fair
   |  Up to our means,'—ROBERT BROWNING.

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      With Illustrations by Gordon Browne

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      *FIFTH IMPRESSION*

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      LONDON
      THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY
      4 Bouverie Street and 65 St. Paul's Churchyard E.C.
      1901

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   CONTENTS

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   CHAP.

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I.  `TWO WORLDS`_
II.  `THE WONDER-CHILD`_
III.  `THE SECOND LADY-HELP`_
IV.  `THE PAINTING OF THE SHIP`_
V.  `DUNKS' SELECTION`_
VI.  `THIRTY THOUSAND A YEAR`_
VII.  `COME HOME!  COME HOME`_
VIII.  `AN ATHEIST`_
IX.  `MORTIMER STEVENSON`_
X.  `'I LOVE YOU'`_
XI.  `A SQUATTER PATRIOT`_
XII.  `R.M.S. UTOPIA`_
XIII.  `THE BUSH CONTINGENT`_
XIV.  `HOME TO THE HARBOUR`_
XV.  `HEART TO HEART`_
XVI.  `THE ROSERY`_
XVII.  `CROSSING THE VELDT`_
XVIII.  `A SKIRMISH BY THE WAY`_
XIX.  `THE MOOD OF A MAID`_
XX.  `MISS BROWNE`_
XXI.  `THE MORNING CABLES`_
XXII.  `CONCLUSION`_





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.. _`Two Worlds`:

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   THE WONDER-CHILD

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   CHAPTER I

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   Two Worlds

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..

   |  'Ah me! while thee the seas and sounding shores
   |        Hold far away.'

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They were walking from the school
to the paddock where the children's
horses, thirty or forty nondescript animals,
grazed all day long.

'Sh' think,' said Peter Small, son of the
butcher who fed Wilgandra,—'Sh' think you
could have afforded one sprat at least for
teacher's present!'

'Afforded!' quoth Bartie Cameron.  'I
could have afforded a thousand pounds!'

'Then why d'ye 'ave 'oles in your stockings,
and bursted boots?' asked Peter.

''Cause it's much nicer than having darns
and patches,' returned Bartie, looking disparagingly
upon his companion's neater garments.

'My old man's got a mortgage on your
sheep,' said Peter, baffled on the patches.

'We like mortgages,' said Bartie airily;
'they make the sheep grow.'

'We've got a new red carpet comin' for our
livin'-room,' shouted Peter.

Bartie looked him over contemptuously.

'I've got a sister in London, and she makes
fifty pounds a night by her playing.'

'You're a lie!' said Peter, who was new to
the school, and did not know the Camerons.

'Take this, then!' said Bartie, and put his
strong young fist in the face of his friend.

A big girl, saddling her horse, came and
pulled them apart, after they had had a round
or two.

'Haven't I got a sister who makes fifty
pounds a concert?' demanded Bartie breathlessly.

'Ain't he a lie?' demanded the son of
the slaughterer.

The big girl arbitrated instantly.  Certainly
Bartie had a sister who made hundreds and
hundreds—more shame to her.  Peter had
better go home and read the papers, if he
did not believe it.

Peter said he did read the papers; he had
never seen anything in them about no sisters.

'What papers?' said the girl.

'*P'lice Budget and War Cry*, of course,'
answered the boy.

'That's the sort of paper *your* sister would
be in,' Bartie said; 'mine is always in the
cables.'  He turned off from both girl and
boy, and made his way to where a half-clipped
horse nibbled at the exhausted pasturage.

A small girl of eight had, with incredible
exertion, put the huge saddle on its back;
Bartie had nothing to do but fasten the girths
in place and put on the bridle.  He flung
himself up, and moved the animal close to
a stump; Floss, the small girl, climbed to a
place behind him, and a nine-year-old boy,
playing marbles near, rose up at the sight of
the moving horse, pocketed his marbles, swung
his bag of books round his neck, and clambered
up to the third place on the steed's broad neck.

All the paddock was a-move.  There was
a general race down to the sliprails, a gentle
thunder of horses' hoofs and boys' shouts,
broken by the shriller cries and 'Good-byes'
of the girls.

Then up and down, left and right, away
along the branching roads rode the country
school children, tea and home before them,
behind, one more day of the quarter's tedium
dropped away for ever.

The Cameron horse jogged along; as a rule she
had only Roly and Floss to carry, Bartie having
a rough pony to journey on; but to-day the
pony had wandered too far to be caught before
school-time, so Tramby had an extra burden,
and walked sedately.

Floss had a tiny red palm to show.

'Why, that's three times this week you've
had the cane!  You must be going it,
Floss,' said Roly.

'It was sewing,' sighed Floss; 'how would
you like to sew?  I know you'd go and hide
behind the shed.'

The front horseman turned his head.  'It's
time you did learn, Floss,' he said; 'look
at my stockings, I'm sick of having holes in
them.  Look at my trousers.'

'I heard Miss Browne telling you to leave
them for her to mend,' said Floss.

'No, thanks,' said Bart; 'I know her
mending too jolly well.  She'd patch it with
stuff that 'ud show a mile off.'

'Yes, look at my elbows,' Roly said; and
though the positions forbade this, a mental
picture of the clumsy mending with stuff worlds
too new rose up before the eyes of his brother
and sister.

Floss was dressed with curious inequality;
she wore heavy country shoes and stockings,
like the rest of the children at that public
school, and her bonnet was of calico and most
primitive manufacture, but her frock was
exquisite—a little Paris-made garment of fine
cashmere, beautifully embroidered.

'I wish some more of Challis's frocks would
come,' she sighed; 'this one's so hot.  I wish
mamma would make her always wear thin
things.'

'Why, she'd be shivering,' said Roly.

'Think how cold it is in Paris and those places!'

'Think how hot it is here!' sighed Floss
and mopped at her streaming little face with
her disengaged hand.

'I got the mail,' Bartie said, and pulled two
letters out of his pocket—a thick one from
his almost-forgotten mother, and a pale blue
with a fanciful C upon the flap from his
twin sister; they both bore the postmark of
Windsor.

'Suppose they're stopping with the Queen
again,' he added laconically.

'Wonder what they have for tea at her
house?' sighed Flossie, and her system revolted
against the corned beef and ill-made bread
that were in prospect for her own meal.

Tramby turned of her own accord at a
sudden gap in the gum-trees, and stood alongside
while Roly stretched and contorted himself
to lift out the sliprail—nothing ever induced
him to dismount for this task.  Then she
stepped daintily over the lower rail, and again
waited while the passenger in the rear stretched
down and made things safe again.

Their father's selection stretched before
them, eighty acres of miserable land, lying grey
and dreary under the canopy of a five o'clock
coppery sky, summer and drought time.

.. _`HOME FROM SCHOOL.`:

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   :alt: HOME FROM SCHOOL.

   HOME FROM SCHOOL.

Patches of fertility showed some one laboured
at the place.  There was a stretch of lucerne,
green as any in the district.  But this was not
saying very much, for Wilgandra's vegetation
as a rule copied the neutral tint of the
gum-trees, rather than the vivid emerald so pleasant
to the eye in country wilds.

There was a small patch under potatoes,
there were half a dozen orange-trees, yellow
with fruit.  At the very door of the house a
cow grazed calmly, and everywhere browsed
the sheep, brown, ragged, dirty things, fifty or
sixty of them, far more than the acreage should
have carried, but still in good condition—it
seemed as if the mortgage was fattening.  The
house was a poor weatherboard place, the paint
blistered off, the windows rickety, the roof of
cruel galvanised iron.

Inside there were chiefly pictures, great
canvases on which Thetis was rising from a
roughly tossing sea, her infant Achilles laughing
in her arms; on which the lofty mountain
Pindus towered, the Muses seated about in
negligent attitudes; on which delicious twists
and turns of the River Thames flowed; on
which wet, cool beaches glistened, and shallow
waves lapped idly.

There was also a piano with a mountain of
music.  Also a few chairs and a table.

Bartie dragged off the saddle and harness,
flung them on the verandah, and turned
Tramby loose among the sheep.  Then he
went into the house.

There rose up listlessly from the doorstep
and a book an exquisitely pretty girl of
seventeen, a girl with sea-blue eyes and a skin
that Wilgandra could in no wise account for,
so soft and fresh and pure it was.  You saw
the same face again and again in the canvasses
about the room, sweetest as Isis, with the
tender, anxious look of motherhood in her
eyes, and Horus in her arms.  This was
Hermie.

'Have you got the mail?' she asked.

Bartie nodded.

'Go and fetch father,' he said; 'he's down
with the roses, I saw his hat moving.'

He flung himself on the ground, listless
with the heat; Floss dragged off her hot frock
and her shoes, and revelled in the pleasure of
her little petticoat and bare feet.  Roly looked
plaintively at the table, on which was no cloth
as yet.

'Miss Browne,' he called, the very tears in
his voice, 'Miss Browne, isn't tea ready?'

A faded spinster, lady-help to the family
for six years, came hurrying into the room.

'Poor Roly!' she said.  'Yes, it is too
bad of me, dear; I was mending your best
jacket, and didn't notice the time.  But I'll
soon have it ready now.'  She ran hastily
about the room looking for the cloth, and at
last remembered she had put it under the
piano-lid, to be out of the dust.  She put on
the vases of exquisite roses that Hermie had
arranged, and a wild collection of odd china
and crockery cups and enamelled ware.

Then she noticed the rent of extraordinary
dimensions in Bartie's coat, the same jagged
place that had made even Peter Small exclaim.

'Dear, dear,' she said, 'this will never do.
This really must not go a moment longer.
Where is my thimble?  Where can I have
put my thimble?  Give me that coat, Bartie,
this minute, if you please.

Bartie took it off, but sat with jealous eye
upon it all the time it was in her hands.  He
would have it mended his way.

'Now, look here,' he said, 'please don't go
putting any fresh stuff in it.  Just sew it over
and over, so the places come together.  I'll
take to mending my own clothes.  It's just
the way you go letting new pieces in that spoils
your mending, Miss Browne.'

'But, Bartie dear,' the gentle lady said,
'see, my love, when a place is torn right
away like this, we have to put fresh stuff
underneath.  I'll just get a tiny bit from my
work-basket.'

'You just won't,' said Bartie stubbornly.
'You give it to me, and I'll mend it myself'—and
he actually took the needle and cotton
and cobbled it over till there certainly was
no hole left.

'Now, my love,' he said, and held it up
triumphantly.

'But it will break away again to-morrow,'
said Miss Browne, in deep distress.  'If you
would just let me put a little patch, Bartie.'

But Bartie clung to his coat.

Roly had strayed out to look at his
kangaroo-rats, but now came back.

The tears came to his voice again at the
sight of Miss Browne, sitting with her thimble
on, looking helplessly at Bartie.

'Oh dear,' he said, 'isn't there never going
to be any tea?'

'You poor little fellow!' she said.  'Just
one minute more, Roly dear.  You can be
sitting down.'

Hermie had gone flying across the ground
to a place in the eighty acres where the ground
dipped into a little valley.  It was all fenced
round with wire, to keep off the fowls and
sheep.  Within there grew roses in such beauty
and profusion as to astonish one.  She saw a
very old cabbage-tree hat bending over a bush,
and darted towards it.

'Dad,' she said, 'dad darling, come along
in; the mail has come.'

There rose up a man, grey as his own selection,
a man not more than five-and-forty.  Eyes
blue as Hermie's own looked from under his
grey eyebrows, a grey beard covered his mouth.

'The mail, did you say, little woman?' he
said, and stopped to prune just one more
shoot here, and snip off just one more drooping
blossom.

'And tea, too, darling; at least I suppose
it will be ready some day.  Come along, you
are very tired, daddie.  Why did you start
ploughing a day like this?'

The man sighed.

'It had to be done, girlie; but see, I gave
myself a reward.  I have been down here an
hour.  Now let us go and read our letters.'

As they reached the living-room they found
Miss Browne dusting the piano and tidying
the music; the setting of the table was
advanced one stage further, that is, the knives
and forks were now on.

Roly came up again from another visit to
his rats.

'Miss Browne,' he said, 'oh dear, oh
dear!'—and stalked off to the kitchen, to
demand of Lizzie, the young State girl who
scrubbed and washed for them, where was the
corned beef for tea, and wasn't there any butter?

But the father was tearing open the letters.
Hermie and Bartie hung over his shoulder,
reading just as eagerly as he.  Floss crouched
between his knees to catch the crumbs.  Roly,
munching while he waited at a hunch of
ill-coloured bread, kept an eye and an ear for
any spoken news, and Miss Browne moved
continually about the room, straightening chairs,
altering the position of the table vases,
rearranging the knives and forks.

Mr. Cameron looked up, and drew forward
a chair next to his own.

'Do sit down, Miss Browne,' he said; 'I
am sure you are very tired.  Sit down, and
let us enjoy this all together.'

So Miss Browne, too, joined the circle, Roly
watching her with a brooding eye.

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'WINDSOR CASTLE.

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'OH, MY DEAR ONES, MY DEAR ONES'
ran the white letter,—'Is the earth shaking
beneath me, have my hands ague, that my pen
trembles like this?  We are coming home,
home, home.  No false reports this time, no
heart-sickening disappointment; the papers are
actually signed for a long season, and we leave
by the Utopia in six weeks.  The news came
an hour ago.  I saw an equerry coming in
with the letters, saw the letter that meant so
much carried up to my room by a house
steward, and had to pass along the corridor
and leave it.  Challis was going down to play
to the Queen in her private sitting-room.  But
after it all was over how we went to our rooms
again!  There was only a chambermaid in
sight, and for the last twenty yards of corridor
we ran.  Home, home, home, to your arms,
my husband, my dear one, my patient old
sweetheart!  Home to my little girls, my boys,
my little boys!  Darlings, my eyes are
streaming.  Oh, to hold you all again, to feel
you, to touch my Hermie's hair—is it all
sunlight yet?—to be crushed with Bartie's
hug, to hold again the poor little babies I
left, my Roly, my little Floss.  Ah, dear ones,
dear ones, now it is all over, now we are
coming, coming to you, I can let you know.
Oh, these weary, weary years, these great cities
where we have no home, no corner of a home.
I have broken my heart for you all every night
since I came away.  Six years, my dear ones,
six years of nights to break my heart.  Be
sorry for mother, and love her, darlings.  Have
you forgotten her, Hermie?  Bart, Bart, have
you kept a little love warm for her?  Ah, dear
God, my babies will not know me, little Floss
will turn away her head.  My sweetheart, my
sweetheart, if the time has been as long for
you, and pleasures as tasteless, and all things
as void, then my heart sickens afresh, for I
know what your life has been.

'What has kept me up all this weary time
I cannot even think.  Whatever it was, it has
snapped now, and I am limp, useless, broken
up into little bits, like nothing so much as a
little child stretching out its arms and crying
to its mother.  Can you not see my arms
stretching, stretching to you?  Does not my
cry come to your little town?  It is Challis
who is the woman now; she sees my work
is done.  She had begun to show me the
bracelet the Queen gave her, and to tell me
what every one had said, but I had torn open
Warner's letter, and found the home orders
had come.  She is packing various little things
now, and has rung, and given orders with the
dearest little air of self-possession.  "Sit down
and write, and tell daddie," she said; "I will
see to everything now."

'The carriage is to come for us in an hour.
We have been here three days, and every one
has been as kind and as enthusiastic as they
are always.  We go to Sandringham on
Friday; the Princess asked for Challis to play
for her guests that night; the Dowager
Empress is to be there, and others.

'Then at Manchester an immense farewell
concert on Monday; Mr. Warner says two
thousand seats are already booked to hear the
"Wonder-Child"; another at Plymouth on
Friday; a rush up to Edinburgh, just for her
to appear at the Philharmonic.  They are
only giving her forty pounds for the night,
but Mr. Warner is unwilling for her to lose
the Scotch connection.

'Then peace, perfect peace, and home.  I
sit and try to fancy the changes the six years
have made in the home.  I am glad you have
had two new bedrooms built; that will allow
you to have a study again, sweetheart, and
Hermie a drawing-room—sixteen is sure to be
hankering for one.  The furniture is looking
a little shabby, I know; but of course that can
be easily remedied, and I have always had my
boxes stuffed with art vases and bits of brass
and bronze, ready for when the good time
came.  You have probably laid down new
carpets long ere this in all the rooms, but I
shall bring some rugs and Eastern squares, for
I doubt if your back-block towns have supplied
what would satisfy my now cultured taste.

'I suppose people wonder at you still being
stuck to the Civil Service at a wretched two
hundred and fifty pounds a year.  Isn't the
prevailing idea that we are rolling in money?
There is surprisingly little for all the
enthusiasm there has been—I think Mr. Warner
said he had banked three thousand pounds
for her—all the rest goes in expenses, which
are enormous.  We are obliged to be at the
best hotels, and to be dressed up-to-date; that
runs away with big sums.  And the advertising
that Mr. Warner says is so necessary swallows
gigantic amounts.  This has been the first
year with much profit.  Sometimes when I
dress my little girlie in her Paris frocks I
think of Hermie, making last season's do
again, perhaps.  Did the last box of Challis's
frocks do for Flossie?  The lady-help, I
am sure, will have been able to cut them down.

'Do not let us think of the future, sweetheart,
I cannot bear it yet.  I cannot leave you
any more, you must not be left; Challis has
had her meed of her mother now, and it is the
turn for the others.  Yet Mr. Warner says
it must be kept up, this life of hers, this
Wandering Jew life.  It is the price great
artists pay.  But the child is brave.

'"You shall not have it any more, mamma,"
she said when I read this out; "you shall go
home to daddie for always now."

'But when I looked at her face it was pale,
and there was that wan look in it that comes
sometimes.  To think of the little tender thing
bearing all this alone!

'But we must not think of the future,
sweetheart; we must not think of it for an instant.
You will come to Sydney to meet us?
Perhaps only you.  And we will come straight
home to Wilgandra with you.  If she ruins
her chances for ever, she shall have one month's
quiet home before the Sydney season begins.
Mr. Warner will try to prevent this, but I
shall be very firm.  Then you must get leave,
and children and all, we will go to Sydney
together, and you shall hear the darling play.
To think you have none of you ever seen
great audiences carried away by her little
fingers!

'Ask the lady-help not to do up my
bedroom for me.  I want to see the faded pink
and white hangings, and the sofa with the
green roses on it, and the knitted counterpane
that grandma made—just as they were when I
left them.

'Oh, my little home, not beautiful, not even
very comfortable, stuck away in that hot little
town hundreds of miles from Sydney—my
heart is breaking for you!'

.. vspace:: 2

Nobody spoke when the letter was finished—nobody,
indeed, had spoken all the way through.
Tired little Floss, finding no news
forthcoming, had fallen asleep.

Roly had sat down to the table, and was
sawing an end off the corned beef.  Miss
Browne, since nothing was read aloud, had
gently risen up and was dusting the piano, to
be less in the way.  But from time to time
she glanced at the letter, alarm in her eyes.
Could it be the little golden girl was ill?

The father put down the letter, and his hand
shook.

'Coming home,' he said, and rose up,
looking dazed; 'we—we must stop her at
once, of course.  Children, how can we stop
her?'

Bart's chest was heaving.  For a second he
had heard the crying come to the little town,
and seen the stretching of the arms.

But out of the window lay the grey selection
that she had never seen; closer at hand were
the rents in his clothes, the broken places on
his boots.  He pulled himself together.

'I'll go down to the post and cable to her
not to come,' he said; 'you be writing it
down, dad.'

And Hermie's girl-heart was breaking.
The letter had shaken the very centre of
her being, and wakened in her a passion of
love and longing for this tender woman.  Oh,
to be held by her, kissed, caressed—to feel
that hand on the hair she could not help but
know was pretty!

But looking up she saw her father's anguished
gaze around him—Bart's manly mastery of
himself.  She brushed her tears aside.

'I'll get the pen and ink,' she said; 'it—it's
late—the cable ought to go to-night.'

Miss Browne sat down, quivering with the
suspense.

'Which,' she whispered, 'which of them is
dead, your mother or little Challis?'

Bartie it was who laughed—a hoarse apology
for a laugh.

'Dead!' he said; 'they're coming home,
Miss Browne!'

It was Miss Browne's turn to look anguished.
She rose up and moved uncertainly about the
room, she began to tidy the music in feverish
haste, she dusted the piano yet again.

Then she turned to Mr. Cameron with one
hand fluttering out.

'I—I—must ask you to let me have a
s—shilling,' she quavered; 'the—the boys
really must have their hair cut before she sees
them.'





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.. _`The Wonder-Child`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER II


.. class:: center medium bold

   The Wonder-Child

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  'Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved!  God's child with His dew
   |  On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still living and blue,
   |  Just broken to twine round thy harp-strings.'

.. vspace:: 2

Up to the last eight years Mr. Cameron's
friends and relatives had always had
their hands full with finding positions for
him that would enable him to support his
wife and family.

Once or twice he was in receipt of five
hundred a year, but much more frequently
he would be in a bank or an insurance company,
starting with a modest salary of a hundred
and twenty.

Every one liked him cordially—they could
not help it.  But every one was unfeignedly
glad when one of the relatives made a great
effort, and, by dint of interviewing Members
of Parliament and getting a little influence
to bear here and a little there, worked him
into the Civil Service, the appointment being
that of Crown Land Agent at Wilgandra,
the salary two hundred and forty pounds,
less ten pounds for the Superannuation Fund.

Wilgandra was so far away—three hundred
and seventy-three miles back, back, away in
the heart of the country—the very farthest
town to which the Government sent its Land
Agents.  Surely the bad penny could never
turn up again to vex their peace!

Even Mrs. Cameron's anxious soul was
set at rest.

The climate was intolerable in the summer,
there was little or no society, the only house
they could have was not over comfortable.
But the work seemed smooth and easy, and
after so many ups and downs the quiet security
of the small hot township seemed delicious
to her.

It was not that Mr. Cameron drank or
gambled, or possessed indeed any highly
coloured sin.  He was simply one of the
impracticables, the dreamers, that the century
has no room for.

He had written verses that the weekly
papers had accepted; indeed, a few daintily
delicate things had found their way into the
best English magazines.

He had painted pictures—a score of them,
perhaps; the art societies had accepted three
of them, refused nine, and never been even
offered the remainder; no one had ever
bought one of them.

He had composed some melodies that a
musical light passing through Sydney professed
to be captivated with, had promised to have
published in London, and had forgotten
entirely.

When they were unpacking their much-ravelled
chattels the first night in Wilgandra,
James Cameron came to his great paint-box
that the late family vicissitudes had prevented
him touching for so long.

'Ah,' he said, and a light of great pleasure
came into his grey eyes as he lifted it from
the packing-case and rubbed the dust off it
with his good cuff—'mine old familiar friend.
Why, Molly darling, I shan't know myself
with a brush in my hand again.  With all the
spare time there will be here, I ought to do
some good work at last.'

Then his wife laid down the stack of little
torn pinafores and patched jackets and frocks
she was lifting from another box, and crossed
the room and knelt down by her husband's
side, just where he was kneeling beside the
rough packing-case that had held his treasure.

'Dear one,' she said, 'dear one, Jim, Jim,'—one
hand went round his neck, her head,
with its warm brown hair that the grey was
threading years too soon, pressed against his
shoulder, her face, old, young, sad, smiling,
looked into his, her brave brown eyes held
tears.

'Why, little woman,' he said, 'what is it—what
is troubling you?  Smiling time has come
again, Molly, the worries are all left behind
with Sydney.'

'Jim,' she said, and her hand tightened on
the paint-box he held, 'Jim, do you know we
have five children, five of them, five?'

'Well, girlie,' he said, and got up and sat
down on the edge of the box and drew her
beside him, 'haven't we an income of two
hundred and thirty pounds for them, a princely
sum, when we are in a place where there is
nothing to tempt us to buy?  And we hardly
left any debts behind us this time.'

'But, dearest, dearest,' she urged, 'if you
get hold of this, we shall not have it a year;
you will get up in cloudland and forget to
furnish your returns or some such thing, and
then you will be dismissed again.'

'Ah, Molly,' he said, his face falling, 'always
the gloomy side.  Couldn't you have given
me a night of happiness?'

A stinging tear fell from the woman's eyes.

'I couldn't, I couldn't,' she said; 'the
danger made my heart grow sick again.  See,
for I must be brutal, the time has come for it.
*I* love your ways, your dreams; no canvas you
have touched, no song, no verses but I have
loved.  But what have they done for us, what
*have* they done?'

The man's eyes, startled, followed her tragic
finger that swept a circle.  Outside he saw the
sun-baked, weary little town that must see
their days and years, inside the cramped room
full of boxes that were disgorging a pitiful
array of shabby clothes and broken furniture;
just at hand his wife, the woman he had taken
to him, fresh and beautiful, to crown his
tenderest dream and turned into this thin,
careworn, anxious-eyed creature.

His face whitened.  'It is worse than
drink!' he said.

She acquiesced sadly.

'Nothing else would make me take it from
you,' she said, her wet eyes falling again to the
paint-box; 'and if it were you and I only
against the world, you should have it all your
days.  But five children to get ready for the
world!  Jim, my heart fails me!'

He was trembling too.  It was the first
time he had felt a sense of genuine responsibility
for his tribe since the time Hermie was put
into his arms, a babe three hours old.  Then
he had rushed away to insure his life for five
hundred pounds.  He forgot, of course, to keep
up the policy after the second month.  Now his
heart felt the weight of the whole five, Hermie,
Bartie and Challis, Roly and little Floss.

He gave his wife a passionate kiss.

'You are right,' he said, 'take it; I give
it all up for ever, and begin from now to
be a man.'

Time went past, and the criss-cross lines
on the mother's brow were fading, and the
anxious outlook of the eyes seemed gone.
She called up a home around her where before
had only been a house; the children were
taught; she even, by dint of hard economy,
made it possible to send to Sydney for the
piano they had left as security for a debt.

The friends in Sydney, two years gone by,
began indeed to congratulate themselves that
Wilgandra had swallowed up for all time that
troublesome yet well-liked fellow Cameron,
and his terrible family.

Then the name began to crop up in the
country news of the daily papers.  Another
wonder-child for Australia had been discovered,
it seemed—a certain Challis Cameron, a mite of
eight years who was creating much excitement
in the township of Wilgandra.

Presently from the larger towns near the
paragraphs also were sent.  A concert had
been given in aid of the Church Fund, and
a pleasing programme had been submitted.
Among the contributors was a tiny child,
Challis Cameron, whose wonderful playing
fairly astonished the big audience.

Before Mr. and Mrs. Cameron had quite
waked up to the situation, an enthusiastic
committee had been formed, a subscription
list started and filled, and a sum of sixty
pounds thrust into their astonished hands, for
the child to be taken to Sydney for lessons.

Nowhere on the earth's surface is there a
a land where the people are so eager to
recognise musical talent, so generous to help
it, as in Australia.

Mr. and Mrs. Cameron looked at each
other when they were left alone, a little
dismay mingled with their natural pride.  And
from each other they looked to the paddock
beside their house where all the children were
playing.  This especial child was unconcernedly
filling up her doll's tea-cups with a particularly
delightful kind of red mud, and then turning
out the little shapes and calling Bartie to
come and look at her 'jellies.'

Talent they had always known she had,
but hardly thought it was anything much above
that of any child very fond of music.  As
a baby she had cried at discords; at three
years old she used to stand at the end of the
piano and make quite pretty little tunes with
one hand in the treble, while Bartie thumped
sticky discords in the bass.  At four she used
to stand beside Hermie, whom her mother
was teaching regularly, and in five minutes
understood what it took her sister an hour
to learn imperfectly.  At four, too, her head
hidden in the sofa-cushion, she could call
out the names of not only single notes but
chords also, as Hermie struck them.  So her
mother undertook her tuition too, and in
two years these paragraphs were appearing
in the papers.

But to go away with her and stay in Sydney
while masters there heard her and taught
her!  What was to become of the other
four, and the husband who needed his wife
so much?

'I am afraid we must send her to a boarding-school
there,' she faltered.  'How can I leave
the home?'

But later the child came and stood at her
knee; a tall, thin, little child she was, with
fair fine hair that fell curlless down her
back, and in her eyes that touch of grey that
makes hazel eyes wonderful.

The face was delicately cut, the skin clear
and pale; only when the pink ran into it
was she pretty.

'I made another song, mamma,' she whispered.

The dying light of the long still day was
in the room, very far away in some one's
fig-trees the locusts hummed, a sprinkle of
sweet rain had fallen, the first for months,
and the delicate scent of it came through the
window.

'What is it, darling?' whispered the mother.

The child's eyes grew larger, she swayed her
tiny body to and fro.

'Oh, the roses, the roses and the shivery
grass!  Oh, the sea!  Oh, the little waves
running on the sand!  Oh, the wind, blowing
the little roses till they die!  Oh, the pink
roses crying, crying!  Oh, the sea!  Oh, the
waves of the crying sea!'

The mother's arm went round the little
body, down into the depths of those eyes she
looked, those eyes with their serious brown
and grey lights mingling, and for one clear
moment there looked back at her the strange
little child-soul that dwelt there.

Out at the door there was a clamour, Roly
demanding bread-and-jam.  From the paddock
came a sudden gust of quarrelling, the
next-door children, with Hermie, shrill-voiced,
arbitrating.  Probably down in the street
Bartie was fighting any or all of the boys
who passed.

'Dear heart!' ran the woman's thoughts.
'My days are too crowded to tend this little
soul.  Better that she too asked bread-and-jam
of me.'

'Play it for me, mother,' said the child,
and plucked at her hand.  'I can't; I have
tried and tried, and the sea won't cry, only
the roses.'

'Nonsense, nonsense!' said the troubled
mother; 'run and play till bedtime.  Play
chasings with Roly and Floss, or be Bartie's
horse.  Have you forgotten the reins I made
him?'

The child seemed to shrink into her shell
instantly.

'I will get the reins,' she said nervously,
obediently.

Into the midnight they talked, the father
and mother; and all they could say was, this
was no child to hand over to a boarding school
or strangers.

Wilgandra and the towns around grew
clamorous.  They grudged every moment that
the child was not being taught, and having
contributed solid coin of the realm for her
education, they were vexed at the
shilly-shallying in using it.

So to Sydney the mother went, half fearfully,
Challis and a modest trunk beside her in a
second-class carriage.

'We shall be back in a month at most,'
she called out for the twentieth time reassuringly
to her family seeing the train off.

But Sydney seemed in league with Wilgandra.
Without a doubt, it said, the most
wonderful child performer ever heard.  It
wiped its eyes at her concerts, when the
manager had to get thick music-books to make
her seat high enough; it stood up and raved
with excitement, when she stepped off the stool
at the end of her performances and rushed
off the stage, to bury her excited little face on
her mother's breast.

Without a doubt, it said, with its peculiar
distrust for the things of its own, here was no
child to be confined to Sydney teachers; it
insisted she must have the best to be had in
the world, and thrust its hands recklessly into
its pockets.

Mrs. Cameron at the end of six months
went back to Wilgandra, the anxious outlook
in her eyes again, and five hundred pounds in
her pocket, the result of concerts and
subscriptions given for the purpose of sending the
child to Germany.

And now what to do?

The small house at Wilgandra seemed going
along very steadily; Mr. Cameron had not
once failed to furnish the reports due from
him to the Government.  The lady-help
selected by the mother had the house and the
children and the father in a state of
immaculate order.  She was a magnificently capable,
managing woman; every one, Mr. Cameron
especially, stood much in awe of her, and
unquestioningly obeyed her smallest mandate;
even Roly, unbidden, performed magnificent
ablutions before he presented himself for a
meal, and Hermie was often to be seen
surreptitiously trying to mend her own
pinafores in the paddock.

Mrs. Cameron could not but confess her
place was not crying out for her to the extent
she had imagined; indeed, the wonderful
lady-help, Miss Macintosh, seemed to have
brought the home into a far better state of
order and discipline than even she, the mother,
had been able to do.  Little Floss was a
healthy and most independent babe of two;
Roly, three years old, was a sturdy mannikin
who stared at her stolidly when, her heart full
of tears, she stooped over him and asked, did
he want her to go away again?

'Mamma mustn't go away in a big ship,
must she, sweetheart?  You can't do without
her again, can you?' she said.

But Roly was a sea-serpent swimming on
the dining-room floor, and the interruption
irritated him.

'Yes,' he assented, with swift cheerfulness,
'mamma go in big ship.  Good-bye,
good-bye!'—and he waved an impatient hand to
get rid of her.

Hermie and Bartie had just started to a
good private school near at hand, and the
teaching—all honour to the mistress!—was of
so skilful and delightful a nature that the
two could hardly summon patience to wait
for breakfast ere they set out for the happy
place.  So Challis's claims tugged hard.

'But you—what of you, my husband?'
she said.  'You cannot spare me; it is
absurd for you to even think of it!'

But he was excited and greatly moved at
the thought of his child's genius.  Deep
down, in his heart was the knowledge that
had he himself been given a chance he could
have made a name for himself in this world.
But there was always uncongenial work for
him, always something else to be done, 'never
the time and the place and the loved one all
together.'

'Let us give her her chance,' he said.
'It is early morning with her.  Don't let
ours be the hands to block her, so that when
evening comes she can only stand wistful.'

So they sailed away, the mother and the
wonder-child; behind them the plain little
home, before, the Palaces of Music.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`The Second Lady-Help`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III


.. class:: center medium bold

   The Second Lady-Help

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  'The droop, the low cares of the mouth,
   |    The trouble uncouth
   |  'Twixt the brows, all that air one is fain
   |    To put out of its pain.'

.. vspace:: 2

And for actually six months that home
survived!  After that the crumbling
was to be expected, for some discerning man
came along, and married the marvellous
lady-help out of hand.

Mr. Cameron spent five pounds in the
purchase of a pair of *entrée* dishes for a
wedding-present, and was unhappy that he
could so very inadequately reward her great
services.  But there was a curious air of
buoyancy and relaxation observable in him the
first day the house was free of her.

At tea he got *The Master of Ballantrae* out,
and read boldly all through the meal, a thing
he had not ventured to do for eighteen months.
And out in the frozen shrubbery at midnight,
with the Master and Mr. Henry thrusting at
each other, he spilled the tea that Hermie
passed him.  When he saw the wide brown
stain he had made on the table's whiteness—although
the ridiculous fancy pursued him that
it was the Master's life-blood smirching the
snow—he looked up startled, full of apologies.
But there was only Hermie's childish face in
front of him; and though she said, 'Oh,
papa!' as became a president of the tea-tray,
she looked away the next second to laugh at
Roly, who had spread his bread with jam on
both sides, and did not know how best to hold
it.  And Cameron felt so much a man and
master of his fate once more, that he stretched
right across the table to help himself to butter,
instead of politely requesting the passing of it.
For three months the household ran a merry
course.  Hermie, a bright little woman of
eleven, begged her father to let her 'keep
house' and give the orders to Lizzie, the very
young general servant.

The father bent his thoughts five minutes to
the problem; Miss Macintosh had been away
now a fortnight, and everything seemed going
along really delightfully.  What need to break
the sweet harmony of the days by getting in
some person whose principles counted reading
at table and spilling tea among the cardinal
vices?

And Lizzie, the State girl, was at his elbow
with a shining face.  She was fifteen, she
said—fifteen was real old!  Now why should the
master go getting in any more of them
lady-helps, who did nothing but scold from
morning to night?  She, Lizzie, would undertake
all there was to do in this place 'on her head.'

Cameron smiled at the eager girls, and,
while hardly daring to consent, put off for a
further day the engagement of a successor to
Miss Macintosh.  And the three months ran
gaily along, and still Hermie sat importantly
at the head of the table, and still her father
read, and still Roly spread his bread upon both
sides.

There was always a good table—far better
than either the mother or lady-help had kept.

For the family grocer had an alluring way
of suggesting delicacies, when he came for his
orders that certainly no mistress of eleven or
handmaid of fifteen could withstand.

'Almonds?' he would say.  'Very fine
almonds this week, Miss Cameron—three
pounds did you say—yes?  And what about
jam?  I have it as low as fivepence a tin, but
there is no knowing what cheap fruit these
makers use.'

'Oh,' Hermie would say, 'I must have very
good jam, of course, or it might make my
little sister ill!  How much is good jam?'

'There's strawberry conserve, a shilling a
tin,' the man would say—'pure fruit and pure
sugar, boiled in silver saucepans.'

'Silver saucepans!  That couldn't hurt
Flossie!  We will have six tins of that, please,'
the small house-woman would answer.  Then
there were biscuits; Miss Macintosh, frugal
soul, only gave Wilgandra, when it came
calling, coffee-biscuits at sevenpence a pound
with its afternoon tea.  Hermie regaled it
upon macaroons at half a crown.  Then Lizzie
would have her say.  What was the use of
cooking meat and vegetables on washing-day,
ironing-day, and Saturdays, she would say,
when you could get them tinned from a grocer?
So tins of tongue, and whitebait, and pressed
meats, French peas, asparagus, and such, were
added weekly to the order, the grocer sending
to Sydney for the unusual things.  'We are
saving a lady-help's wages,' Hermie would
say, 'and it saves the butcher's bills, so it is
not extravagant a bit.'

It was not until the third month that the
day of reckoning came.  Then the grocer,
grown a trifle anxious over his unusual bill,
which no one was settling, ventured to accost
Mr. Cameron one day on his verandah and
present it.

'No haste, of course,' he said politely, 'only
as your good lady and Miss Macintosh always
paid monthly, I thought you might not like
it going on much longer.'

When he had bowed himself out, Mr. Cameron
rubbed his suddenly troubled brow
a moment.  Money, bills!  The thought had
actually never crossed his mind all these three
months!  His wife first and then Miss
Macintosh had always managed the finances
of the family.  Indeed, one of Mrs. Cameron's
injunctions to the lady-help had been, 'When
Mr. Cameron's cheque for his quarter's salary
comes, please be sure to remind him to pay it
into the bank.'  And Miss Macintosh had
never failed to do so, nor to apply for the
twelve pounds monthly for payment of the
household bills.

He went into the dining-room and began
to rummage helplessly about his writing-table.
To save his life he could not recollect what
had become of his last cheque, for there was
a conviction on his mind that he had never
paid it into his account.

Hermie was at the table, Mrs. Beeton's
cookery-book spread open before her; over
her shoulders peeped the heads of Bartie and
Roly, absorbed in the contemplation of the
coloured plate picturing glorified blancmanges
and jellies.  For was not to-morrow Roly's
fifth birthday, for which great preparation must
be made by the young mother of the house?

'Children,' said the father at last
entreatingly, 'come and help me; I have lost
a very important envelope.'

For over an hour did that family search
from one end of the house to the other.  It
was Lizzie's happy thought that discovered it.

'A long blue envelope, with no stamp on
it and just printing instead—why, there was
one like that in the kitchen drawer with the
dinners on it,' she said.

She rushed for it, and met her anxious
master with it held triumphantly out.

The back of the envelope bore dinners for
the week in Hermie's round careful hand.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   *Mon.*—Roast fowl, mashed potatoes,
   collyflower, pink jellie and gem cakes.

   *Tues.*—Tong, blommange and strawberry
   jam, rainbow cake.

   *Wed.*—Sardenes, current buns, yelow jelly
   and merangs.

.. vspace:: 2

Mr. Cameron thrust a trembling hand into
the depths of it, and, to his exquisite relief,
was able to draw out the cheque for his
quarterly sixty pounds.

In danger of the kitchen fire, in danger
of the dust-box, in danger of Roly's passion
for paper-tearing, in danger of all the
wind-storms that had sprung up and torn raging
through the place, in danger of all these for
three months, and still safe!

The relief took the man back into the dining-room,
responsibility for his family to the front
for the third time in his life.

He ran through the bills with a sinking
heart.  Instead of twelve pounds a month
that Miss Macintosh's carefulness had made
suffice, little Hermie had brought up the totals
to twenty-eight—eighty-four pounds for the
quarter, to be deducted from the sixty pounds
that must also pay rent and clothes and many
other things.

The child cried bitterly when he showed her
what she had done.  It had been delicious
pleasure to her, this time of ordering and
helping with the dinners.  Delicious pleasure
to see her father appreciating the changed meals
as much as the boys—Cameron had quite a
boyish appetite for good things, and Hermie's
brilliant menus had been delightful to him
after a long course of Miss Macintosh's boiled
rhubarb puddings, treacle roly-polies, and
milk sagos.

'A first-rate little manager,' he always called
her, when he passed up his plate for more of
the jelly, or more whitebait, or asparagus, and
he recked even less than Bartie that the things
were intrinsically more expensive than rhubarb
or rice.

'Oh, daddie, oh, daddie dear, I am so sorry!'
she said, awake at last to the sad truth that
luxury must be paid for, cash down, and was
a dear commodity.  And her eyes streamed,
and her little chest heaved to such an extent
that he had to put the bills aside and comfort
her affliction, and explain to her that he was
scolding himself, not her.

'But I am eleven,' she kept repeating sadly,
'eleven, papa.  I ought to have known.'

There rang at the door a few minutes later
the master of the boys' school to which Bartie
had just been sent.  Hermie, her mother's
conscientiousness strong in her, had always
gone off to her school each day, though, in
truth, so absorbed was she by her housekeeping
delights that she was a very ill scholar
nowadays.

But Bartie, plain unalloyed boy, had wearied
suddenly of tuition, and found a pleasant
fishing-ground in a secluded creek.  There
was no one to tell him to go to school, it was
against nature that he should betake himself
to servitude every day of his own accord, so,
towards the end of the quarter, it fell out that
he fished two days of the week and studied
three, even at times reversing that order of
things.  In restitution he took canings, his
hands were horny, the touch of the master not
over heavy.

But now the matter was before his father,
and the master was returning home, the
consciousness of duty done lifting his head.

The father's blue eye flashed with strange
fire as he looked at the boy.

'Is my son a thief,' he said, 'that he should
treat me so?  Or is it he despises me because
I leave him unwatched and free?'

With that he strode out of the room, out of
the house; Bart, his conscience quick once
more and in agony, watched him walking,
house-coat on and no hat, down the main
street of the township and up, up, never
resting, to the top of the great hill the other
side they call the Jib.

No further word of the matter was ever
said till the next Christmas, when the boy
marched in with the year's prize for punctuality
under his arm.  Then Cameron shook hands
with him.

'I like a man of honour,' he said.
But the two events together, the grocer's
bill and the master's call, decided the father he
must enter into submission and have another
lady-help, for the children's sake.

How to obtain one?  He made inquiries
about Wilgandra, but the class of people from
whom he sought to take one were of the mind
that prevails in many of the country towns and
bush settlements.  They would rather starve
than serve—at all events where they were
known.  Now and again a self-respecting
intelligent girl broke away from her life and went
off with her trunk to find service in Sydney.

But, for the most part, the daughters of
a house up to the number of seven, or even
ten, stayed under the cramped roof-tree of their
fathers, and led an unoccupied, sheepish
existence, till marriage or death bore them off
to other homes.

So in despair Cameron wrote off to a Sydney
registry office, and asked the manageress to
send him a lady.  Just before he closed the
letter the happy freedom of the last three
months led him to add a postscript, 'I should
like the lady you select to be of not too
managing a disposition—gentle and pleasant.'

The registry office keeper rubbed her hands;
here surely at last was a chance to dispose of
Miss Browne—Miss Browne, who was ever
on the books, who was sent off to a situation
one week, and came back with red eyes
and a hopeless expression the next, dismissed
incontinently as incapable.

The registry office keeper turned up the
town Wilgandra in her railway time-table.

Three hundred and seventy-three miles
away!  Surely at such a distance, especially as
the employer was paying the expensive fare,
Miss Browne might be regarded as settled for
a space of three months!

Mr. Cameron had no complaint to make of
his new lady-help on the score of being of a
managing disposition.  She was gentleness
itself—that kind of deprecating gentleness that
makes the world feel uncomfortable.  She tried
pitifully hard to be pleasant—pleasant and
cheerful.  She worked from earliest morning
to late at night, and accomplished about as
much as Hermie could in two hours.  It took
her nerveless fingers nearly a quarter of an
hour to sew on a waistcoat button, and in little
more than a quarter of an hour the button
would have tumbled off again.

Lizzie seldom trusted her to cook anything;
when she did so the poor lady invariably
emerged from the kitchen with her hands
burnt in several places, sparks in her eyes, the
front width of her dress scorched, her hair
singed, and her poor frail body so utterly
exhausted, the family would insist upon her
instant retirement to bed.

Nobody knew what the woman's life had
been, where had gone the vigour, the energy,
the graces that should still have been hers,
for her years were barely thirty-five.

A crushing sorrow, disappointment on the
heel of disappointment, loneliness, or perhaps
only a grey life full of petty cares passed in
a scorching, withering climate—one or all of
these things had dried the sap out of her, and
left of what might have been a gracious
creature, radiating pleasure and comfort, only
the rags and bones of womanhood.

The Camerons suffered her patiently for
three long months; then the father gathered
his courage up in both hands, closed his ears
to the pity that clamoured at his heart, and
told her gently enough that she must go.

She threw up her fluttering hands and sank
on the sofa—in her eyes the piteous look of
amaze and grief that your fireside dog would
wear if you took a sudden knife to him.  So
kind had the family been, so patient, the poor
creature had told herself exultingly that they
were satisfied, even pleased with her, and had
hugged the novel, delicious thought to sleep
with her for the last two months.

She asked shakingly what she had done.

'Nothing, nothing at all,' Cameron reassured
her eagerly; 'it is merely, merely I can see
you are not strong enough for such a hard
place as mine.'

'A hard place!' she cried, and looked
at him dazed.  'Why, there are only five
of you, and Lizzie to do all the rough
work!  I've been where there were ten, and
done the washing and everything.  I've been
where there were nine, and had to chop the
wood and draw the water myself.  I've been
mother's help and had to carry twin babies
miles in the sun.  I've been where the children
pinched and scratched me.  I've been at places
where I rose at half-past four, and found my
way to bed at eleven.  And in none have I
ever given notice myself.  A hard place!
Dear heart!'

'My dear Miss Browne,' Cameron said,
and such was the fluent nature of the man that
his eyes were filled, and he had no idea that
he lied, 'it was solely for the sake of your
health I spoke.  You look so delicate.  If
you think the duties are not too heavy, why,
I shall be most heartily obliged to you if
you will stay with us indefinitely.'

Then he went away to seek his children,
to tell them her story, and beg their tenderest
patience.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`The Painting of The Ship`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV


.. class:: center medium bold

   The Painting of The Ship

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  'Never a bird within my sad heart sings,
   |  But heaven a flaming stone of thunder flings.'

.. vspace:: 2

Yet his coward pen never plucked courage
to itself to write across seas of this
family incubus.

The earlier letters had spoken variously
of 'Miss Macintosh,' or 'the lady-help'; now
there was never a name given, the references
being merely to 'the lady-help.'  Even the
children scrupulously followed this up.

When the Marvellous One had gone off
with her *entrée* dishes to her new home, the
father had said, 'Children, we will not tell
mother just yet that Miss Macintosh has left,
it would only worry her.  We will wait till
we can write and say we have another one
as good.'

So the tale of Hermie's housekeeping and
the mislaid cheque never crossed the sea, and
the mother in her far German boarding-house
continued to comfort herself with the thought
of Miss Macintosh's perfections.

When Miss Browne's shortcomings made
themselves glaringly patent, the pens again
shallied in telling the story.

'It is so close to Challis's concert, we
mustn't worry them with our little troubles,
children,' the father said.

So Bartie and Hermie continued to write
guarded letters; and if the boy's hand at
times ran on to tell how Miss Browne had
put ugly patches on his clothes, or the girl's
heart began to pour itself out on the thin
paper and speak of the discomfort of the
new reign, recollection would come flooding,
the letters would be cast aside and new
ones written, short, studied, and never saying
more in reference to the vexed question than
'the lady-help had taken Floss out for a walk.'

'I hope Miss Macintosh sees you have
your little pleasures,' the mother would write.
'You do not tell me about birthday parties or
picnics.  Don't forget mother loves to hear
of it all.'

And Hermie would write back sadly:

'The lady-help is very busy just now, but
when she has more time she is going to let
us have a party.'

'I tremble each mail,' the mother wrote
once, 'lest your letter should bring me news
that Miss Macintosh is engaged and about to
be married.  It is strange such a woman has
not been snapped up long before this.'

And Cameron answered:

'I do not think you need worry, my
darling, about the lady-help marrying.  She
has given me to understand she has had a
disappointment, and will never marry.'

But the very guarding of the letters, the
reading of them over, to be sure nothing had
been let slip, made them seem poor and lifeless
to the anxiously devouring eyes the other side
of the world.

She wrote at last:

'Sweetheart, from what you don't say, more
than from what you do, I learn of your
loneliness.  You are so dull, my poor boy,
and the days rise up and sink to rest all grey
like one another.  Yet a little more patience,
and surely there will be plenty of money to
make life all sunshine for you.  But just for
a little brightness, darling, reach down that
box of paints we put away on the cupboard
top, get out your brushes, and let them help
the hours to fly.  While the Conservatorium
has been closed for vacation Challis and I have
been four days in Rome.  And she found me
crying one morning in a picture gallery, in
front of some great picture, a Raphael, or an
Andrea del Sarto—some one, at all events, who
painted with hands of fire.  And yet it was
not the subject of the picture that moved me,
unless it was that the magic canvas wrought
me to the mood that is yours so often.  All
I thought of was the cold harsh woman, the
Martha with blind eyes, who, that first day in
Wilgandra, took away by force and at the
same time the paint-box and the glow from
your life.  My boy, my sweetheart, let me
give it back.  Ah, would that I could stand
on the chair and reach it down from the
cupboard and put it into your hands myself!
But do it now, my darling, this moment.  I
know you will be careful and not risk your
position by forgetfulness.  And when you are
loneliest, when you miss me most, let the
brushes take my place.'

Cameron had been reading his letter at the
tea-table.

'Children,' he said, and rose up, his face
working, his eyes shining strangely, 'children,
mother wants me to paint pictures again.  I—she
says I am to get the box down.'

The table had no comprehension of the
greatness of the matter, but rose up at once,
at seeing the father so moved.  Roly brought
his mug of sweetened milk along with him,
Floss continued to bite at her crust of
bread-and-jam, Miss Browne fluttered about, Hermie
and Bart pressed at their father's elbow.

'Bring a chair, Bartie,' Cameron said, 'here
at the cupboard in the hall.'

'Mine cubbub,' interjected Floss; 'me's hat
in dere.  Go 'way, daddie.'

'I'll climb up,' said eager Bart.  'What is
it up there, dad?'

'Give me the chair—let me reach it down
myself,' Cameron said, and stepped up and
stretched his long arm to the top.

A dusty mustard-box!  The children's eyes
brightened with swift thoughts of treasure,
then dulled when the lid was flung back and
displayed nothing but a chaos of dirty oil-tubes
and brushes.

But when they saw their father's glistening
eyes, saw him fingering the same tubes with
a tender, lingering touch, looking at the
brushes' points, they did not tell him they
were disappointed in the treasure.  Instead,
Bart led off with a cheer.

'Hurrah for daddie the artist!' he shouted.

'Hurrah!' cried Hermie.

''Rah!' shrilled Roly.

Floss claimed a kiss.

'Me dive daddie dat,' she said in her kindest
way, 'out mine cubbub.'

And thus was the painting of the ship begun.

'Can you see what I mean, Bart?' Cameron
said two months later, when the picture was
almost finished, so desperately had he worked
at it.

'You mean it for a ship, don't you?' Bart
said.  'If I'd been you, though, dad, I'd have
painted a steamship with two funnels.  People
don't think much of sailing-boats now.'

'Can you see what I mean, Hermie?'
Cameron said, and wistfulness had crept into
his eyes.

Hermie's blue-flower eyes were regarding
the great canvas dubiously.

'Couldn't you have made the water blue,
papa?' she said; 'the sea is blue, you know.
P'raps, though, you hadn't enough blue paint.
But I like it to be a sailing-boat; steamships
aren't so clean.'

The man's heart clamoured for his wife,
who had never been at a loss to find what he
meant.  For a moment it seemed intolerable
to him that she was not there at his elbow, to
share the exaltation of the moment with him.

'Run away, run away,' he said irritably to
Hermie and Bart; 'you shake my elbow, you
worry me; run away.'

Miss Browne made a hysterical noise in her
throat.

'It is so sad,' she said; 'what is it you have
done to it?  It is only a ship and a man, and
yet—do you know I can hardly keep the
sobs back when I look at it.'

To her amaze her employer turned eagerly
round, shook her hand again and again in
warmest gratitude, and fell to painting once
more with feverish haste.

The canvas showed a livid stretch of coast
and ocean, and a spectre ship with a spectre
captain at the helm.

The ship had an indescribably sad effect.
You saw her straining through the strong,
repellent waves, you heard her cordage
creaking, you saw her battling stem struggling to
push a way.  She was a living thing, breaking
her heart over the black hopelessness of her
task.  The captain's face burnt flame-white
out from the canvas; his desperate eyes stared
straight ahead; his long hand held the helm
in a frightful grip.  You knew he was aware
he would never round his cape; you knew
he would fight to do so through all eternity.

The Camerons celebrated the day of the
finishing of the picture as a high holiday.
The children had ten shillings tossed to them
to spend as they liked.  They bought a
marvellous motley of edible things, and dragged
their father and Miss Browne up the Jib to
partake of them.  It were sheer madness to
suppose a whole half-crown's worth of Brazil
nuts; to say nothing of chocolates, tarts and
other extreme dainties, could be discussed
within the cramped walls of a house in a street.
The whole width of the heavens was needed,
and a thousand gum-trees, and the smell of
earth and grass.

Cameron walked about on the heights as
if on air.  He had not painted that canvas
that stood, still wet, down below in the
straggling town.  He had entertained a spirit,
something stronger, fiercer, more triumphantly
capable than himself.  He could have flung
up his arms and run shouting up and down,
shouting thanks to the winds, the trees, the
sailing skies, that the spirit had taken its
dwelling in him.  Magnificent fancies came
bursting upon him; now and again he held
his head, so rich were the conceptions, so
strong felt his hand to bring them into instant
being.

An urgent craving for his wife took hold
of him—he strode away from the children's
shouts, away from Miss Browne, who sat
wretched because she had forgotten the
tin-opener, and the tea, and the sugar.

He found himself down near the creek,
with the gums waving eighty feet above his
head, gums with snow patches of blossoms
on them, stern gums, smiling gums, red, silver,
blue.  And he called, 'Molly,' and the trees
encouraged him.

And again, 'Molly,' 'Molly,' and there
burst up to his lips from his heart all the words
he had had to stifle away since the sailing of
her ship.  All that he would have poured out
to her these last two years, all that had lain
quiet and kept his being stagnant since that
last agonised clinging of her arms.

'I thought I could bear it,' the man said
to the trees, 'but I can't—it is too much!
Are you listening to me, Molly?  I must have
you again to talk to.  She has had you long
enough—Challis has had her share of you;
now I must have you again.  These children
take us from each other, Molly.  We are very
fond of them, but we should have more time
to love each other without them, to love
like we did twelve years ago.  I want you,
to tell you about the picture, Molly, Molly.
Can you hear, darling, can you hear?'

And sometimes she seemed near to him,
seemed a part of the air, the trees, the earth,
and he raved to her and talked joyously.

And sometimes he lost her, the delicate
spirit webs broken by the world's machinery,
and he dropped his head on his arms and wept.

But when the thread snapped finally, and
nothing could bring her to him again, he
groped his way upwards, for now the loneliness,
after the speaking, was a thing he dared not
bear.  The children welcomed him eagerly.
They had wanted him so badly, they said,
for dinner, and here he came only just in
time for tea.  Would he please open that tin
of jam—there was no opener, but perhaps
he could do it with a bit of broken bottle?
And there were no matches; would he please
use his and light the fire?  The tea was
forgotten, but hot milk and water would be
nice, perhaps, but there was only a little
milk remaining, and the sugar had been left
behind.  He fell to laughing, and was thereby
restored to more normal mind.  He lighted
the fire, and water and milk circulated round
the little party, and refreshed it.  He attended
to the wounded—Bart had gashed his hand
attempting the opening of that tin of jam,
Hermie had a tick in her arm, Roly had
stirred up a nest of bull-dog ants, and had
met with his due reward, Floss had eaten too
many chocolates, and Miss Browne had been
stuck in the mud, attempting to get water
from a pot-hole; her large shabby shoes
looked pathetically ridiculous.

So by the time he had helped all his lame
dogs over their stiles, and got them ready
for marching home, his mood was quite a
happy one again.  He went down the
mountain-side, Floss in his arms, Bart and
Hermie on either side, Miss Browne and
Roly close at hand.

And with a flushed face and happy eyes
and a fluent tongue he told them all manner
of wonderful things; in very truth he could
keep them to himself no longer.  How the
world was going to be very pleased indeed
with his picture, and hang it in so famous a
place that Challis would not be the only one
making the name of Cameron celebrated.
And how a whole mint of gold was going
to be given to him for it—Hermie and Miss
Browne would be able to order all they liked
and more from the family grocer.  And how
he was going to send for mamma to come
at once to stay with them again, so that they
could all live happily to the end of their
days.

Through the little town they wound with
eyes shining at the thought.

Hermie's order-loving soul was soothed at
the vision of domestic peace once more.  Bart
resolved to keep his best knickerbockers for
the mother-fingers to mend.

'Can she make puddings?' said Roly, who
despised the culinary skill of Miss Browne.
And 'Mam-mam,' murmured little sleepy
Floss, not because her mind held recollection
of using the name, but because a baby next-door
spoke it incessantly, and it seemed pleasant.
Only Miss Browne looked wistful-eyed; a
mother such as this seemed would never deem
her capable enough; Christmas would see her
back in Sydney, weariedly waiting occupation
in the registry office.

They turned the key of the door—Lizzie
had had holiday also.  And on the threshold,
pushed beneath the door by the post-boy,
lay another long blue envelope with no stamp
upon it, and only printed letters instead.

Cameron picked it up, quite without
suspicion—his cheque for the quarter, he
supposed.

But the reading told him he was dismissed
the service for his carelessness and the culpable
neglect of his duties during the past four
months.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Dunks' Selection`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V


.. class:: center medium bold

   Dunks' Selection

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  'Well, it is earth with me; Silence resumes her reign,
   |  I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce.'

.. vspace:: 2

'I shouldn't think it can be very
much farther, dad,' said Bart.

'I believe we have passed it,' Hermie
sighed; 'I am sure we have come much more
than nine miles,' and she mopped her hot
cheeks that the sun, burn as he would, had
never freckled.

Cameron, the reins slack in his hand, looked
doubtfully from side to side.

'It ought to be somewhere here,' he said;
'isn't that a fence at the top of the hill?
Yes, I'm sure it is.'  He touched the horse
lightly with the switch that Floss held, and
on they went again.  They were in a borrowed
broken-springed buggy, the five of them and
Miss Browne, come out to see the home their
father was buying—none of them, not even
the father, had seen it yet.

For a couple of months after his dismissal
Cameron had lingered on in the house in
Wilgandra, too bewildered and helpless to
know what to do.

It was not the first time a similar crisis had
happened, but before his wife had always taken
matters in hand, looked up situations for him
in the papers, interviewed influential people,
brushed his clothes and sent him out with little
to do but present himself to his employer.

But now he was completely at sea.

He wrote a few letters to Sydney friends,
vaguely asking if they knew of 'a billet.'  But
seven years' silence makes strangers of ones
best friends; some were scattered, and dead
letters were the only reply; others wrote to
say Sydney had never been in such a state of
hopeless depression, and strongly advised him
not to come to add to the frightful army of
the unemployed.

'Why not go on the land?' said one or
two of them.  'A man like you with a growing
family should do well there, and you would
at least be your own master and free from
"a month's notice."'

Cameron first asked the children what they
thought of 'going on the land.'

When they heard this meant moving to a
new place, and having sheep and growing all
their own things, and each one helping, they
were enchanted.

Cameron was too shy and reserved to have
made many friends in the township, but he
put on a clean cool coat and filled his pipe
and wandered forth, with the vague idea of
asking some one's advice on the matter.  But
there was a race-meeting in a neighbouring
township, and the streets were almost deserted,
the tradespeople and the land-and-estate agent
being the only men at their posts.  The latter,
however, struck Cameron as the very man
to ask.  And Cameron struck the agent as
the very man for whom he had been waiting.
There was a selection, he said, a few miles
away—eighty acres of fine land that its drunken
owner, Dunks, had hardly stirred since he had
taken it up.  There was a five-roomed cottage
on it, there were fifty head of sheep, poultry,
a couple of horses, a cart, and all tools.  Dunks,
anxious to get to Sydney, was willing to let
all go for two hundred and fifty pounds.

But Cameron went home hopeless, he could
as easily raise two thousand pounds as two
hundred and fifty.

Hermie met him with a registered letter
from which a cheque for a hundred fluttered.
Challis's professors, it seemed, had allowed
her to give a few concerts in the midst of her
course of lessons, and five hundred pounds had
been the result.

'The child insists that I shall send a
hundred,' ran the letter, 'for you all to buy
presents with, and though I don't know what
you can buy—but sheep—in Wilgandra, I send
it.  More I do not enclose, my dear one, for
well do I know how shockingly you would
lose and give it away.  But all have some fun
with this hundred, and now every penny that
comes I shall jealously bank for the future
and for the child's own use, as is but fair and
right.'

Cameron and Bartie and Hermie went
eagerly off to the agent's again.  Cameron
held up his cheque, and asked if it would do
if they paid that amount down and the rest
on terms.  And the agent, after a little demur,
was agreeable—had he not that morning been
visited by Dunks, who said he would take
as low as a hundred and fifty to be rid of
the place?

Cameron almost handed the cheque over
there and then, but then some of the prudence
learned from his wife came to him, and he
pocketed it instead, and said they would go
and look at the place.

Thereupon, the following Saturday, the
agent lent his buggy, gave directions for
finding, and this was the journeying.

'Yes,' Cameron said, 'this must be it, but
there doesn't seem to be a gate.  I suppose
we had better go through these sliprails.  Get
down and lift them out, Bart.'

The early summer, in her eagerness and
passion for growth and beauty, had been
tender even to Dunks' selection.  The appearance
of the place appalled none of the buggy-load.

Wattle in bloom made a glory of the
uncleared spaces, the young gums were very
green, the older ones wore masses of soft
white upon their soberness.

Farther away there browsed brown sheep,
but this was the season for lambs, and a dozen
little soft snowballs of things had come close
to the cottage and gambolled with the children.
There was a bleating calf with a child's pink
sash tied round its neck, fluff balls of chickens
ran under the feet, downy ducklings were
picking everywhere.

And all this young life was so beautiful a
sight that the children were wild with rapture,
and Cameron's dreamy beauty-loving soul told
him here was the home for him.

The cottage shocked him somewhat, it was
so very tumbledown, the roof was so low, the
windows so broken.

He began to consider whether he had not
better take up a selection for himself near at
hand and run up his own cottage, these walls
were hardly worth the pulling down.

But Mrs. Dunks began to talk to him, and
her apron was at her eyes nearly all the time.
He learned that Dunks was the best of men,
and only weak.  If once they could get from
this neighbourhood and his bad companions
to Forbes, where her own people were, he
would surely reform.  He learned that
Mrs. Dunks had nine children, all under fourteen;
that she was in a consumption, and only the
air of Forbes could cure her.  It seemed to
him that he could not turn round to this
fragile, heavily burdened creature, look into
her fever-bright, anxious eyes, and tell her he
would not give her this chance to end her
days among her own people.

So he looked at all the young life again,
and the sheer sun, bursting out of the wattles,
and was glad to be persuaded that a little
paint and a bit of timber would make the
house quite new again.

'Do you think,' he said, and turned round
to the woman, 'that you could give me
possession of the place in a month?'

And the woman burst into thankful tears,
and told him they would be gone to-morrow.

'I've packed up for going eighteen times
this year,' she said through her tears.  'I've
got my hand well in.'

Dunks was away in the township, the
youngest baby was lying in her arms looking
up at her with pure eyes, and the pale wraith
death, whom she ever felt beside her, had kept
her conscience tender.

'Did—did you say the agent told you two
hundred and fifty?' she faltered.

Cameron thought of his children and braced
himself up.

'He did,' he said firmly, 'and I cannot
possibly give you a penny-piece more.  I
consider it is a very fair price.'

'But—but——' the woman began again.

'It is no use, I can go no further,' Cameron
said, 'so please do not waste your breath'—and
he unhobbled his horse and prepared for
the journey home, his face set away from her,
lest he should be softened.

How could he dream she wanted to tell
him that a hundred and fifty was all they had
asked, and more than the place was worth,
so ill in repair was everything?  Then the
thought of this man's famous child came to
her—Challis, with fingers of gold.  What
were a hundred pounds to the father of such
a child?

She looked away from the eyes of her babe,
she forgot that she and death were met, and
replied:

'Very well, we will take two hundred and
fifty, Mr. Cameron.'

Going homewards in the jolting buggy the
talk was of the happiest.

'Miss Browne and I will look after the
fowls, daddie,' Hermie said.

'An' me,' said Floss.

'You and I must get the crops in,' Bart and
his father told each other.

But how this would be done, and what the
crops should be, they had but the remotest
notion; still, it was a phrase heard often in
Wilgandra, and sounded well.

'Will it take you long to learn to shear the
sheep?' asked Miss Browne timidly.

Cameron looked a trifle disturbed.  Sheep
seemed very right and proper things to own
when one was 'going on the land,' but it
had not yet occurred to him to think to what
use he was going to put them.

Bart's observation of his neighbours had
been a little keener than this, however.

'We sha'n't get any wool to mention from
that handful,' he said.  'I suppose they are for
killing.  Mrs. Dunks says they use a sheep a
week.  Her husband kills one every Saturday.'

'Who—who—oh, surely you will not have
to kill them, Mr. Cameron!' said Miss Browne,
shuddering with horror.  'Surely you will not
be expected to kill them for yourself.'

The thought of it turned Cameron sick; it
seemed to him he had never quite got over
chopping off a fowl's head once for his wife,
though it was nine years ago.

Roly gloated over the thought.

'I'll shoot them with my bow and arrow,'
he said.

Cameron wiped his brow.

'I suppose one could use a gun to them, eh,
Bart?' he said.

But Bart looked doubtful.

Nearing home Cameron gave the reins to
Bartie, and leaped out and walked the last
mile or two, wrestling with the problem how
he might turn himself from a dreamer of
dreams into a practicable, hard-working man
of business.  It had to be done, some way,
somehow, or what to do with these children,
and how to face his wife?

Then suddenly he found his thoughts had
wandered to the sunset fire that blazed before
him in the sky; he was putting it in a picture,
massing up the purple banks, touching the
edges with a streak of scarlet.

When he convicted himself of the wandering
he groaned aloud.

'There is only one way,' he said, and walked
into his house with lifted head.

The children were stretching their limbs
after their cramping drive, Roly and Bart
panting on the floor, a cup of water beside
them so warm and flat and tasteless that even
thirst would not bring them to it.  Bart
was talking of Nansen, picturing stupendous
icebergs, revelling in the exquisite frigidity
of the water in which Nansen had washed
luxuriously every day.  The exercise actually
cooled the little party down one degree.  Then
in to them came their father.

'I want a bonfire made in the yard,' he said;
'a very big one, I have something to burn.'

The boys were upright in a moment and on
their way; even Floss tossed down the
newspaper with which she was fanning herself (the
*Wilgandra Times*, with which was incorporated
the *Moondi Mercury*), and rushed to partake
of the fun, and Hermie and Miss Browne
found themselves impelled to go and see what
was happening.

Such a blaze!  Bart raked up a lot of
garden rubbish and added tree branches.
Roly, feeling quite authorised since the bonfire
had been commanded by his father and was
no illicit one of his own, made journeys to
and from the wood-heap and piled on the
better part of a quarter of a ton of wood
just paid for.

Then down came the father, his blue eyes
a little wild, his mouth not quite under his
own control.  He had his mustard-box under
his arm.

'Oh, daddie!' Hermie cried and sprang at
him.  'Oh no, no, no!'

But he pushed her aside.

'Don't speak to me—none of you speak
one word,' he said, and he stooped and dropped
the box where the flames leapt.

'No, no, no!' Hermie screamed, and rushed
at it, and put a hand right through the flame
and touched the box, then drew back,
helpless, crying.

'Get away!' Bart said, and pushed her
back from danger and took the work himself,
a rake for aid.

He dragged the charred box out, Miss
Browne fluttered round him and caught at
the lid and burnt her hands, and fell over
the rake and singed her hair and eyebrows.
Roly and Floss, carried off their feet by the
excitement, rushed to help, and the box lay
safely on the grass again, two minutes from
the time it had been in the flames.

'Let it alone, no one dare to touch it!'
commanded the father, and the voice was one
the children had never heard before.

He picked the box up, hot and blackened
as it was, and flung it on the fire again;
the lid fell off, there came a rain of tubes
and paint-brushes, a splutter or two from the
turpentine, the smell of burnt paint, then the
fire burnt steadily again, and there was silence
that only Hermie's bitter crying broke.

The father had gone back to the house;
he came down to them once again and this
time The Ship was in his arms.

Surely an ill-starred ship!  There had been
no money to send it to Sydney for the
artists there to appraise; Cameron, absolutely
frightened when he found how the debts were
growing, exhibited it in Wilgandra and a
neighbouring town or two, and marked it ten
pounds.

But who in the back-blocks was going to
give that sum for a picture without a frame?
The coloured supplements, with elaborate plush
surrounds, satisfied the artistic yearnings of
most of the community, and The Ship came back
to sad anchorage in the Cameron dining-room.

But to burn it!

Hermie gave a fresh despairing cry.  Floss,
Bart, and Roly stood absolutely still, the instinct
of obedience strong at such a crisis.

Cameron's arm was again raised, but Miss
Browne flung herself right upon him and
clung to the canvas, her weak hands suddenly
filled with strength and tenacity.

.. _`'NOT THIS, NOT THIS,' SHE CRIED, 'ANYTHING BUT THIS.'`:

.. figure:: images/img-078.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: 'NOT THIS, NOT THIS,' SHE CRIED, 'ANYTHING BUT THIS.'

   'NOT THIS, NOT THIS,' SHE CRIED, 'ANYTHING BUT THIS.'

'Not this, not this!' she cried.  'Anything
but this!  Give it to me—I will keep it from
your sight—I will hide it away—it shall
never meet your eyes.  My ship, my ship,
you shall not burn it.'

She held it in her arms, actually torn from
his grasp.

Cameron glanced around—the leaping flames,
the startled children, Hermie's hysterical
sobbing, Miss Browne's wild attitude of daring
and defiance—he told himself he had taken
a theatrical vengeance on himself.

'Oh, do as you like,' he said irritably,
and turned back to the house.  'Bart, put
a bucket of water on that fire.'

One month from the night of the sacrifice
the Camerons were in possession of the
selection, and Mrs. Dunks was lying in peace
among those of her own people who rested
from the sun's heat in the Forbes graveyard.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Thirty Thousand a Year`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI


.. class:: center medium bold

   Thirty Thousand a Year

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  'Ah, for a man to arise in me,
   |  That the man I am may cease to be.'

.. vspace:: 2

'I should think we might get the bag
of corn now, eh, Bart?'  Cameron
wiped his brow, and stopped to survey the
patch of ground that looked so smooth.

Bart looked at it critically.

'I think we'd better give it another turn,
dad,' he said, and hitched the string-mended
harness a little more securely to the jaded
horse.  'It's such a lunatic plough, it misses
twice for every time it hits.'

Cameron looked at the wide space of ground
to be gone over yet again.

'I'm very anxious to get the corn in,' he
said.  'You see, we're a month late as it is,
and it will be a big saving in feed when we
have it to cut.'

'Yes; but it is no good unless the ground
is ready,' Bart said.  'We have no manure
or anything like the *Journal* says.  We'd
better give it an extra turn.'

'You're quite right, quite right, my boy,'
Cameron said, and led his horse on again, up
and down, up and down the furrows.

'I don't like such a lot of stumps being left
in,' Bart said, the seventh time in an hour
that the plough had gnashed on one.  'In
the *Journal* there's a picture of a stump
eradicator—a grand little machine.  We'll have
to save up and get it, dad.'

'Ay, ay,' said the father; 'still, I don't
think the stumps will interfere very much.
The corn can easily come up between them.'

'It would be easier ploughing,' sighed Bart,
following the horse about in a waved line.

'You're tired out, lad; knock off for a
spell,' Cameron said.  'I keep forgetting how
young you are.  We have been working here
since eight—five hours.'

But Bart would work till he dropped rather
than leave off a minute before his father.  He
took a long drink at the oatmeal water Miss
Browne had made, and went on stooping,
picking out the stones, digging spots the
unfaithful plough had left untouched, following
the horse while his father dug.

Cameron was thin as a rail.  Ever since
they had come here he had worked like a
man possessed, for the spectacle that came to
haunt his nights was of his children in actual
need of bread.  He had left debts behind
him in the township—a hundred pounds' worth
of them; there was a hundred and fifty yet
to pay on the selection; and the patching-up
of the house, rough as it had been, had taken
money.  There was seed to buy, there were
tools to mend or replace, interest to pay on
the money he had borrowed on the place—a
thousand other things.

And not one word of all the changes did
the letters carry across the secret seas.

'There is no need to worry mamma
unnecessarily,' Cameron said to the children.
'When we have made a great success of the
place and paid everything off, then we will
tell her.'

Across the acres came the insistent sound
of the dinner-bell.

'I don't think I'll stop,' Cameron said,
'I'm not hungry.  Off you go, Bart, and don't
come back for an hour.'

But Bart was learning the art of managing
his father.

'The poor old nag wants a rest,' he said.
'We must take her up and give her a drink
and some oats.  And I'd come in to dinner,
dad, if I were you.  Hermie will be
disappointed if you don't.'

So they went up to the little patchwork
house together.

It was not to a very tempting repast the
bell had summoned them.  Hermie, no longer
able to order macaroons and whitebait and
tinned oysters to make delicacies with, had,
childlike, lost interest in the culinary
department of the house.  And Miss Browne was
no artist; to her a leg of mutton represented
nothing but a leg of mutton, and fricassees
and such tempting departures seemed but tales
in the cookery book never to be put to
practical use.

To-day there were chops—fried.  Years
back, when Lizzie came fresh from the State
to Mrs. Cameron's tutelage, she had been
instantly instructed in the fine art of grilling.
But now that there was no one to insist upon
these delicate distinctions, and the frying-pan
was so much easier labour, Cameron was
slowly forgetting the taste of grilled meat.

There were potatoes too; the family took
it for granted that these were necessarily nasty
things, either watery or burnt.

Bread and jam—no longer silver-pan conserve,
but cheap raspberry, in which the chief
element was tomato—finishing the pleasing
repast.

Miss Browne sat at the head of the table,
exhausted and dishevelled, for she had swept
the room, had sewn on four buttons, and dressed
Floss, and set the table.

Cameron, before removing to the selection,
had dismissed her again, gently enough; he
knew it would be impossible to continue to
pay her ten shillings a week for being a
nuisance to them.

And again she had wept and wrung her
hands and entreated to remain.  The tears
streaming down her cheeks, she told him the
time she had been in his family was the
happiest in her life.  She would not dream
of taking money now, she said; but she
implored him to let her work for her home.
So here she was, still at the head of the table,
faithfully apportioning the dish of chops and
keeping the smallest and worst-cooked one
quietly for herself, and pouring out tea, which
all the family drank with each and every meal,
so slowly and confusedly that her own was
always cold before she touched it.

'Not a chop?' she said to Cameron.  'Oh,
but you really must.  Think of the severe
physical labour you are continually doing.
Just a small one!  You touched no meat
yesterday, nor the day before.'  She looked on
the verge of tears.

'Don't trouble, I don't care for any,'
Cameron said.  'I'll have some—some,'—his
eyes wandered round the table in search
of something nicer than the potatoes—'some
bread and butter.'

But Lizzie's prentice hand at bread!  And
store butter three weeks old!  He reached
himself *Pendennis*, and, helped by the pleasant
gossiping of the mayor, managed to swallow
a few mouthfuls.

All through the meal Miss Browne lamented
over his appetite, but he heeded her voice
just as much as he did the flies that buzzed
round his tea-cup—both were integral parts of
life, and to be endured.

'May I put you a chop aside, and warm it
up for your tea?' she persisted anxiously.

He put his finger on the place in the book
and looked up for one second.

'I am going to try vegetarianism,' he said.
'I have come to the conclusion that meat
does not agree with me.'

And it did not.  Every second Saturday
now with his own hands he was obliged to kill
a sheep for the sake of his family; he found
a man would charge ten shillings each time
to come the distance.  The physical nausea
for the task was such that from the time he
first took the knife into his shuddering hand
to the day they buried him, no morsel of
animal food passed his lips.

The children were still—a month after they
had come—full of magnificent enthusiasms.
Hermie and Miss Browne were going to restore
the fallen fortunes of the family by raising
poultry.  Hermie worked intoxicating sums
on paper, and even Miss Browne, distrustful
of the child's arithmetic, on checking the
figures could find so little wrong that she
began to be a-tremble with delight at the
prospect herself.  Bart himself, the only one
of the family touched with caution, found
they had left sufficient margin for losses, and
assented that a fortune might assuredly be
made.

For who could dispute the fact that the
grocer charged from one to two shillings a
dozen for his eggs, according to season?  Let
them reckon on the basis of one shilling.  And
Small, the butcher, charged three and sixpence
to four and sixpence a pair for table fowls.
Let them be very safe, and say two and sixpence.

They were starting with the twelve fowls the
Dunks had left on the estate.  Now if one
hen in one year brought up three clutches
of chickens, how many would that make?
Hermie, with shining eyes, cried thirty-nine;
but Bart, who had seen mortality among
chickens, refused to put down more than
twenty.

'Very well,' said Hermie, 'count twenty,
if you like, only I know it will be thirty-nine,
I shall be so careful of them.  Twelve hens
with twenty chickens each—that will be—that
will be—what are twelve twenties, Miss
Browne?'

'Two hundred and forty,' replied the lady,
amazed herself that it could be so much, 'two
hundred and forty!  Why, I have never seen
so many together in my life.'

Bart wrote down the figures two hundred
and forty.

'Fowls grow up in six months,' Hermie
said.  'Lizzie says so, and her mother used
to keep fowls.  The *Journal* says—I read
it this morning—that fowls generally lay two
hundred eggs a year.'

'Say one hundred and fifty,' Bart said.

'Very well,' said Hermie.  'Please, Miss
Browne, what are two hundred and forty times
one hundred and fifty?'

'My dear,' gasped Miss Browne, 'I—I
really need a pencil for that.'

Bart offered his stump, and Miss Browne
was five minutes working the sum, so sure
was she she must have made an astounding
mistake somewhere.

'It—it certainly comes to thirty-six thousand,'
she said at last.

'Would you please multiply it by a shilling
a dozen, and say what it comes to,' was
Hermie's further request.

Miss Browne again took a surprising time
to do the simple sum.

'A hundred and fifty pounds,' she said.

'That is for the first year,' Hermie said;
'but now would you please work it out on
this big piece of paper, and see what we should
get the second year.  Two hundred and forty
fowls——'

'And the twelve you began with, too,' said Roly.

Hermie was quite willing to be cautious.

'We won't count them, we'll allow for them
dying, too,' she said.  'Two hundred and
forty fowls with, say, twenty chickens each in
the year.  What's that?'

Miss Browne's pencil worked.

'Four thousand eight hundred,' she said.

'And they lay one hundred and fifty eggs
a year.'

Miss Browne looked quite shaken at the
result her arithmetic produced—seven hundred
and twenty thousand eggs!  Three thousand
pounds!

The excitement made her work out the
results of the third year, and she was weeping
when the sun came out—sixty thousand
pounds.  She was weeping for her grey spoiled
life.  Exquisite dresses, travel, health, even
marriage, and little children of her own, would
have been all possible, had she worked these
sums years and years ago, and set to work with
twelve fowls.

Bart still had misgivings.

'More might die than that,' he said.

Hermie was quite pale with excitement.

'We have counted that half that come out
die,' she said, 'and Lizzie says her mother
always reared ten out of every thirteen.  We
have only counted six.  But count three, if you
like; still, that is thirty thousand pounds.  And
we have not counted selling any.'

Even Bart saw the moderation that only
counted three chickens to each hatching, and
his doubts died away.

Visions of all this wealth intoxicated the
children; they tore their father from his book;
Hermie told him, with eyes ashine with tears
and little heaving breast, that he was never to
do any more of that dreadful ploughing, that
in three years they would be making thirty
thousand a year, at least, by no harder work
than just feeding the fowls and packing up eggs.

He smiled at them very gently; he could
not bear to damp their ardour.  In very truth
he could not exactly find out why these figures
should not be as they seemed.

'Of course you would have a huge feed-bill
and want a big run of land,' he said.

Bart gave a comprehensive sweep of his
young arm towards the scrubby bush-land that
lay around them.

'As much as we like for a shilling an acre
a year,' he said.

'But the feed-bill?'

'Five thousand a year would buy enough
at all events, and still we'd have twenty-five
thousand left,' Hermie said jubilantly.  'You
will give up the ploughing, won't you,
daddie?'

Cameron temporised, and said he would just
do a little while the chickens grew.

That night a violent wind came up with
drenching rain.  Cameron lay listening to it,
wondering what skies were over the head of
his beloved whom the seas held from him.

Then he heard doors opening and shutting,
whispered words, and finally a series of very
angry cackles.  He threw on some clothes,
and went to find out the meaning.  In the
living-room an oil lamp was flaring in the
draught, a Plymouth rock was roosting on
the piano top, a white Leghorn was regarding
the sofa suspiciously.  On the floor sat
Hermie, rubbing a wrathful fowl dry with a
Turkish bath-towel, and presently in staggered
Bartie and Miss Browne, the former with five
fowls by the legs, the latter nervously holding
one at arm's length.

Cameron fell into a convulsion of silent
laughter, so earnest were the children, so
absorbed.  And Miss Browne, poor Miss
Browne, how ludicrous she looked with her
scanty hair flying ragged round her shoulders,
her figure clad in an ancient mackintosh, her
mouth frightened, her eyes heroic with the
endeavour not to let go the fowl, which twisted
itself madly to peck at her trembling hand!

'I don't know what you are laughing for,
papa,' Hermie said, a trifle offended.  'The
fowl-house leaks dreadfully.'

'But it has rained half a dozen nights since
we came; you never brought the things in
here before, my child,' he urged.

Hermie received Miss Browne's contribution
on her knee, and fell to drying its dejected
feathers.

'We didn't know before that each of them
was worth two thousand five hundred pounds,'
she said.  'Please, papa, will you hold Bartie's
fowls, so that he can light the fire.  We are
going to give them something hot to drink.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Come Home!  Come Home`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII


.. class:: center medium bold

   Come Home!  Come Home

.. vspace:: 1

.

   |  'Oh, that 'twere possible,
   |    After long grief and pain,
   |  To find the arms of my true love
   |    Around me once again!'

.. vspace:: 2

Five years dragged on.  Sometimes word
came that the travellers were at last
coming home, and Cameron's heart grew
warm, only to grow cold again, as he realised
he dare not let them come to this.  Then,
while the agony of dread still was crushing
him, the next mail would bring the bitter
relief that the time was not yet—the agent
or the music masters or some one else had
found another year was necessary, or the great
career would be spoiled.  Not one word all
this time of the selection, else had the 'career'
been in instant danger of the ruin predicted,
the mother would have journeyed at the
greatest possible number of knots an hour
back to them.  Her dreamer of dreams
depending on a selection, her children depending
on her dreamer, become his own master!

Yet surely the man had had his lesson, and
toiled now marvellously, piteously.

Five years, and not one idle day.

Five years of bewildered struggling with
unknown enemies—drought, hurricanes of wind,
bush fires, devastating rains, a soil that the
farmer born and bred could hardly have made
pay.  Never a complaining word.  Hermie,
growing to womanhood, broke her heart over
his life at times.

There was even a day when she fell down
on her knees at a chair, and covered paper
wildly with a pen that commanded her mother
to come home.

Cameron working obstinately on one
frightful day, the thermometer one hundred and
seventeen degrees, had a 'touch of the sun,'
and even after the doctor had left him quieted,
his head in cool cloths, his temperature
falling, he still moaned for his wife, cried to
her like a child, stretched out his arms, raved,
besought her to hold his hand.  It was then
that Hermie broke her promise, down on
her knees, just hidden by the bed-curtain,
writing wildly with the pen she had brought
for the doctor to write his prescription.

'By the next boat,' she wrote; 'if you wait
for the one after, it will be wicked of you.
How can you stay like this?  Challis, Challis—all
our lives spoiled for her to have a chance!
We have no chance; father's life is worse
than any dog's.  Challis—I think I hate Challis!
Going along quietly and happily, are we?
Miss Macintosh taking your place?  We are
starving, worse than starving; the food we
have to eat is worse than none at all.  He
needs delicate things, ice and invalid dishes,
properly cooked.  I have just been to the
safe to look what I could get, and the mutton
has gone bad—it goes bad nearly every day
in summer here; there is no milk, for the
cows have no feed, there is some nasty mouldy
bread and bad butter, and golden syrup with
flies in it, and sugar alive with ants.  You!
You and Challis are eating the best things
that can be bought with money.  I hate
Challis!  The doctor says we are to keep his
head cool with water, and to stand vessels
full of water about the room to cool the air.
The well is nearly dry, the sun has turned the
tank water bad, or else a wombat or a bird
has fallen in, and it is poisonous.  Bartie has
gone a mile with the cart to beg some from
the Dalys.

'Miss Macintosh taking care of us all so
nicely!  We have no one in the world but
Miss Browne.  Oh yes, we have told you lies
and lies, but you ought not to have believed
them.  You should have come to see for
yourself that he was happy and well.  Oh, if
you could hear him crying, just to hold your
hand, he says, and to hear you talk!  Ah,
mother, mother, mother, how cruel you are!'

But the spirit of the man, just learning to
be indomitable, kept him back from long
illness.  In four days he was up again, easily
turned sick and faint, but able to lie on the
sofa, and even take an interest in the delicacies
that Hermie set before him.  She had ridden
Tramby into Wilgandra herself, gone to the
grocer, and implored him for nice things—calf's
foot jellies, and whitebait, and Canadian
tinned fruit.

'My sister, Challis Cameron, the pianist
will be back soon.  I have written for them
to come, so you will be sure to be paid.'

And the grocer, a kindly spot in his heart
still for the youngest housekeeper he had ever
taken orders from, made up a big basket of
tinned goods, and said he would wait for
Challis to pay him.

'Hermie,' Cameron said from the sofa on
the fifth day, 'my head is still confused, but
I seem to remember when I was very bad that
you kept telling me mamma was coming.
There has been no letter, has there?'

Hermie grew a little pale.

'No, there has been no letter, papa,' she said.

'Hermie,' he cried, after spending a minute
trying to find the reason for her curiously
averted head, 'you did not write for mamma,
Hermie?'

She turned to him then, her blue young
eyes on fire.

'I did,' she said; 'it is time, more than
time she came.  If she does not come soon,
you—we—we shall all be dead!'

'Child, child!' he said.

He had risen from his sofa and gone to the
window, to look once more with aching eyes
at his wretched lands.  If this had been the
green isle in the sea he had dreamed of making
it, he would have sent long ago himself.  But
these desolate acres!

'Child,' he groaned, 'I couldn't let her come
to this.  I am only half a man—half a man.
God left the manliness out of me when He
made me, and gave me womanish ways instead.
And I have never fought them down, as it must
have been meant I should do.  But I will
begin again, I will work harder—things must
take a turn, and then I can meet her, and she
will not despise me.  Child, God has no more
awful punishment than when He lets those we
love despise us.  Send another letter, tell her
not to come yet—not just yet.  Let me have
one more chance.'

Hermie was sobbing at his side, pulling at
his arm, trying to urge him back to the sofa.
She knew he was not talking to her, knew
he was hardly aware she was there, but her
sensitive spirit, leaping at his troubles with
him, was bowed down with the knowledge and
weight of them.  How she loved this man—this
grey-haired, blue-eyed man at her side!
Hardly the love of daughter for father; her
feelings for him had in them something of the
passionate, protecting tenderness of a mother
for a crippled child.

'Lie down,' she said, 'there—let me move
these pillows; that is better.  She must
come—she should have come long ago.  And I
told her to be sure to come by the next boat.
Now lie still; I am going to get your lunch.'

The exertion and emotion had tried him
exceedingly.  He lay still, still, his face to the
wall; and now his mood brought a tear from
under his eyelid.  It was too late!  She would
have started!  Ah, well, praise God for that!
God who took these things out of our hands.
She was coming—he might give up for a little
time, and lie with his head on her breast; she
who had always forgiven him would forgive
him still and clasp him to her, and call him,
'Dear One.'  Then all he would ask would
be the happiness of dying before the world
began again.

The happy tears rolled down his cheeks.
Hermie, tip-toeing back with her tray, saw
them, and was filled with dismay.  What had
she done by this interference?

'Darling,' she said, dropping beside him,
'don't mind, don't mind.  The letter is not
posted yet—Bartie was going to take it in
this afternoon.  It is not mail day till
to-morrow.  We will not send it.'

Not posted!  Not posted!  She was not
coming—she might not know of his extremity,
his need for her!  The chill wind passed over
him and dried his tears, dried his heart.

'Here is the letter,' the poor child cried;
'don't look like that, darling.  I would not
vex you for the world.  Shall I tear it up?'

He looked at it piteously.  Oh, that Bartie
had it, riding with it through the bush,
summoning her, summoning her!

'Shall I burn it?' said the poor little girl.

'Yes,' he said, 'burn it.'  His voice was
lifeless, his eyes stared dully at the wall.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`An Atheist`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   An Atheist

.. vspace:: 1

'Thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne
the burden and heat of the day.'

.. vspace:: 2

Hermie put her letter and all hopes of
rescue together into the kitchen fire.

Life was an endless drab again.

She went listlessly out, and stood on the
doorstep to look at it.

Her father did not want her, he had pushed
his lunch aside, and bidden her, irritably—he
who was so gentle—to leave him to himself.

Bart, poor grave little Bart, a man at fourteen,
was working about the place.  Neither he nor
the young ones had gone to school while the
father had been ill.  He and Roly had been
all the morning beating monotonously at a
bush fire just across the road.  There was
no excitement about it, there seemed little
danger; the fire burned quietly, steadily—it
had been burning for two days—but this
morning it had crept to the fences; the boys
had been obliged to cut boughs and beat at it.

Roly sat on the fence most of the time, and
sleepily kept back the cunning yellow tongues
from the patch Bart had entrusted to him.
Bart walked up and down, mechanically threshing
out the little licking flames that longed
to curl round the fence.

Sometimes he left Roly on guard, and went
to do necessary work, feed the two calves,
shed a burning tear over the dying sheep, give
Tramby a few drops of water.

Hermie went down to him wearily, a
sun-bonnet on her head.

'There's no danger about the fire?'  She
looked at it a little apathetically.

'Oh no; if there were three of us, we could
put it all out.  Roly's not much use, of
course.'

'Bart, what are we going to do?'

'For water?  Oh, Daly's going to let me
have a big cask to-night.  You've got half
a bucketful still, haven't you?  I didn't want
to take Tramby out till it was cooler.  Reminds
me, I must mend the cart—that old shaft's
smashed again.'

'And when that cask's gone?'

'Oh, I'll go and get some from old Perry.
His well's not half dry, and there's only
himself.  But don't you go and be wasteful,
Herm—no washing clothes and that sort of
waste.'

'I want a bath—I want to turn on a tap,
and not have to use just a dipper or two.
All Challis has to do is turn on a
tap.'  Hermie spoke with a strange bitterness.

Bart smiled good-humouredly.  'Yes, she's
a lucky little beggar,' he said.  'My word,
if I could have the bath-water she wastes,
I'd make this poor old place look up a bit.'

He looked round on the desolate acres,
looked at them with yearning affection.  He
was a quiet-natured boy; he did not call
himself unhappy; he would have felt he had
nothing left to ask for, had he but a plentiful
water supply for the stock and crops, and
better tools to work with, and a little more
strength in that young arm of his.  Like
his mother, he had the knack of doing the
thing at hand with all his power, and already
he was a far more proficient farmer than his
father would ever be.

'What are you going to do now?' the girl
asked, as he hurried away.  'I'll come with
you if you like.'  Such a hot, patient young
face his was, it smote her that she seldom
heeded him.  He looked pleased at her faint
show of interest.

He showed her the corn, coming up bravely,
the wheat patch, not drooping quite as much
as it might have done.  He pointed to the
trees in the little orchard.  'In another month
or two those apricots and peaches will be
about ripe,' he said; 'make a nice change,
won't they?'  His eyes dwelt lovingly on the
green small fruit.  'When the drought
breaks——'

'Pshaw!' said the girl.

'Oh,' the lad said cheerfully, 'it will, one
of these days; then we'll go along grand.'

He had caught the spirit of patience, of
acceptance of ills, from the settlers about.

'But the sheep, nothing will give them life
again!'  The girl's eyes burned.

The boy had no fortitude against this; he
gave a sudden wet glance towards the far end
of the selection.

'Let's go and see how they're getting on,'
he said in a low tone.

The girl rebelled.

'No—why?' she said.  'It only makes us
miserable, and we can't help.'

'All right, you go back,' Bart said.  'I'll
have to go.  I might have to light another
fire.'

Hermie followed him.

The sheep crept away from the house to
die, once they found no water was to be had
there.  They chose to lie down and cease to
be at the spot where once had been a dam.
Patches of ashes showed where Bart had piled
wood over the poor carcases and burnt them
up, in his wise young knowledge that the air
must be kept pure.

None were dead to-day, though fifty seemed
dying.  Half a dozen brown ragged little lambs
filled the air with piteous outcry.

Hermie's heart swelled.

'Can't you do anything?' she said.

'No,' he said, 'they'll have to go.  I've had
to give them up, dear.  If I can get water for
the house for the next week, I'll be glad.  Daly
is running very short himself.'

There were footsteps in the bush just near,
a panting of breath, a curious dragging sound.

'Floss,' said Hermie, and remembered for
the first time she had not seen her little sister
for hours.  'Where can she have been?'

The child was dragging a bucket.  Her face
was almost purple with the heat; she had kept
her eyes half closed, to shut out the almost
unendurable glare, and did not know she was
so close to home till she stumbled almost into
Bart's arms.

When she saw Hermie there too, she clung
to the handle jealously.

'It's not for the house,' she said, 'so don't
you think it.  Let it alone, Bart!  Bart, if
you take it, I'll scratch.'

Such a fierce little face it was!

'I'm only going to carry it for you, Chucks,'
Bart said.  'You shall do what you like
with it.'

'True'n honour?'

'True and honour.'

The little girl relinquished her hold, but kept
a guarding eye on the precious fluid.

'Where did you get it, old girl?' Bart said.

'Don't tell father?'

'Why ever not?' said Hermie.

Floss turned on her vehemently.

'I took it,' she said.  'Don't care, I'm glad.
They've got a whole cask, the greedies, and
lots of money, so they can get as much as
they like.  They get casks from the Bore, and
they're sent down in the train, and they've
got a cart to fetch it.  They drink it all
themselves—pigs!  They don't care about the
sheep.'

'Not the Scotts, Floss—you've not been
stealing the poor Scotts' water?' cried Hermie,
aghast.  The Scotts lived in a miserable hut on
the adjoining selection, and were the nearest
neighbours.

Flossie's eyes blazed indignantly.

'Them!' she said.  'They've got less than
us!  I got it from those mean measuring men.'

Hermie looked puzzled.

'She must mean that camp of surveyors
down the road,' Bart said.  'It's a mile away
at least.  Why, you poor old Flossie, have
you been right down to that camp for this
little drop of water?'  He put his disengaged
arm over her bony little shoulders.

Floss caught her breath, and looked
unhappily into the half-full bucket.

'The first one was fuller,' she said, 'but
the s-sheep nearly knocked me down to g-get
it, and they s-s-spilled it on the g-ground.'  Her
voice shook with sorrow for the waste.

'Twice,' muttered Bart, 'she's been twice, Hermie.'

They were back among the sheep now, and
Bart hardly knew what to do with such a
drop among so many.

'This one,' said Floss; 'look at its poor
eyes—and that one lying down, and the little
lambs, Bartie.'

Bart put the bucket to the noses of the
ones she touched, but had to drag it away
before the poor things had half what they
wanted.

A piteous bleat went up from the others.

'I—I think I'll just get one more,' Floss
said, and almost staggered to the bucket.  'It's
quite easy to steal it now; the camp's left
all by itself.  Oh, I must get one more—look
at that one's eyes.'

But Bart picked her up in his arms, and
started back to the house with her.

'You'll just come and lie down quietly,' he
said.  'I never saw anything like your face.
You'll be ill like father.  Poor little
Floss! poor little old Floss!'

'There—there would have been half a bucket
more,' said Floss, 'only I nearly fell once,
and it s-s-spilled.'  She was sobbing on his
shoulder, sobbing heart-brokenly, hard little
Floss who never cried.

Hermie took the child from her brother at
the door.

'I'll undress her and sponge her,' she said;
'that will cool her a little, but I quite expect
she will be ill like father.  Well, it is all
Challis's fault.'

In an hour Floss lay asleep, the fierce heat
of her cheeks a little faded, and Hermie's
hands were idle again.

Miss Browne was helping Lizzie to fold
the poor rags of clothes from the wash; the
father still begged to be left alone; outside
Bart and Roly still threshed monotonously
at the fire.

Hermie went into the tiny bedroom that
had been run up for her because the house
was too small—the bedroom that the mother
had been so pleased to hear was built.  She
found herself looking in the glass at herself,
looking sadly, listlessly.

She saw a girl, thin, undeveloped, with a
delicately cut face, and shadows lying like
ink-smears beneath her eyes.  Her womanhood
was coming, and she had no strength to meet
it; at her age she should have had rounded
limbs and pleasing curves.  She seemed to
recognise this, as she gazed unhappily at her
angles.  Her hair pleased her, for the sun
was making a glory of it; there was a nameless
beauty about her face that she recognised
vaguely.

'I shall never marry,' she sobbed.  'No one
ever comes here but that heavy, stupid Morty.
I shall be like Miss Browne in a few more
years.  I'm getting untidy now—no one can
be tidy in clothes like these; I never care
how I do my hair—what is the use, when there
is no one to see it?  I've not been to a party
or a proper picnic, like the girls in the book,
in all my life.  I shouldn't know what to do,
if I did go to one.  No; I shall grow just
like Miss Browne, and it is all Challis's
fault.'

A portrait of the sweet-faced girl-player
hung on the wall.  Hermie tore it down from
its place and broke it into fragments.

'I'm just tired to death of seeing you smile!'
she muttered.

Miss Browne came in—Miss Browne, with
perspiration on her face and a strand or two
of her colourless hair loose.  She carried an
armful of Hermie's clothes from the wash.
'They are a very bad colour,' she said, 'but
we cannot blame Lizzie, when there was next
to no water.  My dear, what is the matter?'

Hermie did not even wipe the tears from
her face; she was sitting still, her hands on
her knees, and letting the salt drops trickle
drearily down her cheeks.

Miss Browne took a step towards her, then
paused timidly.  There had never been much
intimacy or confidence between them.  Hermie,
with her innate love of daintiness and beauty
and the hardness of youth, despised while she
pitied the poor woman.

'Is it—anything I can help—your
father—Floss—you are anxious—worried?'

'Oh no,' said Hermie, 'I wasn't thinking
of any one but myself.'  She leaned her head
back, and had a sense of pleasure in her rolling
tears.  'I suppose I'm not much more
miserable than usual; but then I expect you are
miserable—every one is, I think.'

'But not in the middle of the day, love,'
the lady-help said.

'Why not?'

'Oh'—vaguely—'there isn't time, as a rule.
One is so busy.  It is a different thing when
you go to bed.'

'What do you do then,' said Hermie, 'when
you are miserable in bed?'

Miss Browne thought a second.  'I think
I say my prayers,' she said.

'And if that does not cure you?'

'I say them again.'

'And if you are still miserable?'

'I—I think I go to sleep then; one is
generally tired.'  She spoke apologetically.

Hermie leaned her head still farther back.
'Saying prayers would not help me much,' she
said.  'I am an atheist.'

'What?' screamed Miss Browne.

'An atheist,' said Hermie.  'It is very
comfortable to be one.  You have only to
think about eating and sleeping.  Oh dear!'

She arose languidly and administered water
to Miss Browne, who was gasping alarmingly.
'This room is hot,' she said.  'Go and lie
down in your own.  You shouldn't have made
me talk, if you didn't want to hear things.
Mind that bit of loose wood at the door.'

Miss Browne, thus dismissed, went away
like a chidden child, but her eyes were full
of terror, and her very knees trembled.  She
groped her way to the sitting-room and poured
out the frightful story into Mr. Cameron's ears.

He made his own way presently to the hot,
cramped bedroom.  Hermie had let her hair
down, and was sitting on the edge of the bed
surveying her poor little prettinesses tragically
in the looking-glass.

Her father sat down on the bed beside her,
and disclaimed fatigue and headache and
everything else she urged upon him.

'What is this Miss Browne tells me, little
one?' he said, and almost indulgently, so
young, slight, and absurd she looked, to be
questioning eternity.

Hermie twisted her wavy hair up into a
hard plain knot.

'I only said I was an atheist,' she said,
and her young lips quivered and her eyes
grew wild.

He put his arm round her.

'How long have you been feeling like this,
childie?'

She burst into a passion of frightened tears.

'Since yesterday morning,' she said.

'Tell me about it,' he whispered.

She swallowed a few sobs.  'I'm tired of
saying prayers, nothing gets better—nothing
comes.  It—it's easy enough to believe in
God, if you live in Sydney and have water
laid on—and cool days and money and a
mother.  But out here—oh, He can't expect
us to believe in Him!'

'I think a few of us do,' he said.

'Us!' she repeated.  'You don't believe
anything, do you, father?  I've never heard
you say a word.  I have thought for long
enough you were an atheist too.'

He took his arm away and moved to the
little window; it was almost ten minutes
before he turned round and came back
to her.

'Child,' he said, 'sometimes I think my
mistakes are too many for me.  I have nothing
to say to you.  I dare not even say, Forgive
me.  Poor little child, to have come to such
rocks!  I should have helped you long ago.
Only, you see, I had got in the habit of
leaving these things to mother.'

'Mother did not often go to church,' said
Hermie discontentedly.  'I don't remember
her talking religion much.'

'She breathed it instead,' he said; 'she is
the best woman in the world, never forget
that, Hermie.  When we were first married
I was full of the young university man's
talk—brain at war with established doctrines.
She never came over weakly to me, as some
women might have done, she never kept
spotlessly aloof, indeed, she conceded me freely
many of my points.  But she managed to
make it plain to me that all these questions
mattered very little—Christ, and prayer, and
love, and doing our best—those were her
rocks, and waves of dogma washing for ever
on them could not move them.'

'Did she ever read any of those books of
yours—those on the top shelf?' whispered
Hermie.

'Ah,' said Cameron, 'you have been
reading those, have you?  Oh yes, she was
never afraid to read anything that was written,
but she distinguished between faith and creed.
She said she did not try to explain or
understand God, only to believe in Him.  She is
quite right.  It is the hard names, the popular
orthodoxies, the iron creeds, that take the
soul and heart and warmth out of religion.
When you were little, she did nothing more
than show you God as your Father, and Christ
as your Saviour, to be tenderly loved and
obeyed, and gone to for refuge and comfort.'

'No,' said Hermie.

'No; it was her way.  She wanted the love
of God to be a living thing to you all—a
glad, warm, spontaneous thing, like the love
you bore us, only deeper.  She would have
no lines and rules and analyses of it while
you were small.  It was not a thing she
actually spoke about very often, but white
hours, find room for themselves at times—on
plain Mondays and Saturdays as often as
on quiet Sundays, and she had a way of
making the influence of them run, clear, fresh,
pleasant streams through the mud-flats of life.
Can you realise in any degree what it is to
me to find her daughter with such thoughts,
Hermie?'  His voice was very low.  Hermie
pulled the pin from the plain tight knob, and
let all her hair hide her flushed face again.

'If—if only I had known you thought like
this!' she muttered.

'Yes,' he said; 'it is a thing I shall never
be able to put away from my mind again,
that I did not let you know.  A man gets
in the way of keeping quiet things like these
to himself, but I should not have forgotten
I had children.  I knew Miss Browne was
a good woman, whatever her faults, and I
felt that I might leave you to her.  Don't
think I am excusing myself.'

'It was not your fault, darling, darling,'
Hermie said, and clung to him; 'but think
how miserable we are—all of us, even poor
little Floss!  How can He forget us like this?'

Cameron's blue eyes looked out at the blue sky.

'Not to understand, only to believe.  He
does not lead us always through green pastures.
The severe and daily discipline makes us
shrink, no doubt.  But we have to go on.'

'Oh, darling, I do love you, I do love you!'
wept the girl.

'Tie up your hair, childie, and we will
go down and sit among the roses, if any are
still alive.  I am quite strong enough to walk.'

He opened the door, and they went out
together, and neither looked at the sky.  But
here had gathered a brave cloud host, and
there another contingent came, determined,
black-browed, strenuously fighting the
long-victorious sun, desperately clinging together.
And over the fainting earth flashed its lights,
and through the heavens tore the sudden
thunder of its guns.

And the battle was to it.

Down came the sweet torrents of the rain,
and the cracked, piteous earth lay breathlessly
glad and still beneath it.  You heard the
calves call to their mothers, the surprised
whinny of the horses seeking shelter.  You
saw the sheep struggling to their feet and
lapping the wet grass with swollen tongues.

You heard the birds making all sorts of new
little cries and noises, as they flew wildly for
shelter—birds many of them that had been
born and grown to make nests for themselves,
and never known the strange phenomenon
of rain.

You heard the hisses and splutters of the
bush fires, as the evil spirit went out of them.

You saw a lad come up from them, his
beating bough still in his hand, the lines of
his young grave face all broken up, and the
glad tears bursting out, to meet the deluge of
rain that beat in his face.

You saw a small girl rushing out half dressed
and heedless of the torrent, for the exquisite
pleasure of seeing the sheep drink.

You saw a woman with thin, blown hair and
a drab complexion saying her prayers in her
bedroom.

Down where the roses were just recalled to
life, Hermie was clinging to her father, both
wet through with the sweet blinding rain.

'Oh, you didn't believe me, did you?' she
cried.  'As if I could—as if I could!  It was
just that the dust had got into my heart and
choked me.  Oh, darling, I never really meant
that dreadful thing!  Dearest, you don't think
I meant it, do you?'  Her tears were gushing
out in streams.

'I never believed it for one moment,' he
said, and kissed her, and led her back to the
house.





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.. _`Mortimer Stevenson`:

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   CHAPTER IX


.. class:: center medium bold

   Mortimer Stevenson

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..

   |  He was a man, take him for all and all.'

.. vspace:: 2

Morty came up to the selection the
next Sunday—Mortimer Stevenson.

'Glad to see you, Morty,' Cameron said.
'What's the news of the war?  It is a week
since we have seen the paper.

Mortimer fastened his horses' reins to the
verandah-post, then drew half a dozen papers
out of his saddle-bag—a daily or two, a couple
of weeklies, one or two English special war
numbers.

'I'd rather you read for yourself,' he said,
handing them to the older man; 'it's not
pretty enough to talk about much.  Those
Boers take a lot of beating.  Of course, it
will be all right as soon as Lord Roberts
takes charge.'

The crisp papers were in Cameron's hands;
a few yards away an old canvas chair stretched
itself out invitingly.

'Hermie, my dear—Miss Browne—here is
Mr. Stevenson,' he called down the passage
of the little house.

'Don't mind me, I'll just sit down here
and have a smoke while you read,' Stevenson
said; 'don't disturb any one, perhaps they
are busy.'

He sat down on the verandah step, and
began to fill his pipe, and Cameron, relieved,
opened his papers, and was in the Transvaal
for the rest of the afternoon.

To look at, Stevenson was a typical young
bushman.  He had added inches to his stature
so rapidly, and breadth to his shoulders, that
he was ill at ease anywhere but in the saddle.
His complexion was burnt to a deep copper.
Grey, good eyes looked squarely at you.

Used to cities, you would not like his dress.
A serviceable tweed suit, country-cut, one of the
brilliant ties, which, so the storekeepers persuade
the bush, are worn in Sydney, a soft brown
hat with its dangling, string-coloured fly-veil.

His father was a vigorous old man of
seventy; his type occurs again and again
on the out back stations.

He had gathered great wealth during all
those laborious years, and he spent it, if not
frugally, at least with full respect for its difficult
garnering.  He had been a member of the
Upper House, and his wife, during her
lifetime, had much enjoyed the dignity of seeing
his letters addressed, 'The Hon. Matthew
Stevenson, M.L.C.'

He had had but a rudimentary education,
yet his plain common-sense and clear intellect
had made the loss only a slight one to him.
To his sons—six of them he had—he offered
education, or at all events its equivalent—the
money for it—liberally, and three of them had
taken advantage of it, and gone finally into
various professions in Sydney.

The others—the duller three—had assimilated
just as much of the tonic waters as does
the ordinary youth of eighteen; then they shook
the dust of Sydney off their feet, and returned
thankfully to the station where their hearts had
always been.  Mortimer was youngest of this
latter three, and the only one now unmarried.

Bart came down the passage, and his eyes
brightened at the sight of the figure smoking
on the verandah step.

'Hallo!' he said, 'just the fellow I wanted.
Look here, Daly gave me a whole lot of new
seed—Sheep Burnett I think he called it.
Will it hurt to sow it on that place where
the sorghum was?'

'Oh, any place will do, old chap; but you
needn't waste your best ground; it's great
stuff, you know—it would grow in the Sahara.
Just sow it along with your grass or clover
seeds.'

'It comes up quickly, doesn't it?' Bart said
anxiously.  'Do you think it would make all
down there look smooth and green and nice
in a month?'

Mortimer laughed.  'Are you taking to
landscape gardening, Bart?' he said.  'I
never knew before you had an eye for effect.'

Bart sat down on the step.  'It's no joking
matter, Morty,' he said.  'My mother and
Challis will be home in a month; we've got
to make the place look up a bit before they
come.  The governor's been making bonfires
of all the rubbish since breakfast—it does
look tidier, doesn't it?'

Mortimer looked round.  'It's not the same
place,' he said heartily, and added for
encouragement, 'And after all, perhaps they
won't come, old fellow; you know you've
had a lot of false alarms.'

'Oh, but this time it's certain,' Bart said,
and not without unhappiness; 'they've actually
started by this.'

Floss came clattering out in her rough boots.
She sat down on the other side of the family
friend.

'I knewed it was you when I heard Pup
bark,' she said; 'you came last Sunday, too,
and the Sunday before that.'

'Did I, Flossie?' he said.  'That sounds
as if it were a Sunday too many.'

'Oh no, no one minds you,' she answered;
'if it were your father, now, or the Revering
Mr. Smith, it might be a nuisance; we'd have
to put a clean tablecloth on for them.'

'And that sounds as if I am going to be
asked to stay to tea, Floss?' Mortimer said.

'Of course you are,' was Flossie's reply.
'Miss Browne says it's the least we can do,
considering all the papers and things you give
us.  Only she says she doesn't know how she's
going to make the butter spin out.  We don't
get it from the store again till Thursday.'

'There, hold your tongue, Floss,' said Bart,
'you'll make Morty afraid to take any.'

'Oh no, he needn't be,' Floss said.  'Me
and Roly's going to say we don't like it under
our jam.'

Roly came stealthily from behind some trees.

'Where is she?' he whispered.

'It's all right,' Floss said; 'she's got to
change her dress, and her hair was pretty
awful, so she'll have to do it again.'

Thus reassured, Roly ventured to the step,
and took up a position at Mortimer's shoulder.
He was attired in an orange and blue-striped
football jersey, and the most respectable pair
of knickerbockers he possessed.  Mortimer
had given him the jersey on his last birthday,
and it was the boy's dearest possession.

'Why,' said Mortimer, 'what have you
been after?  Is Miss Browne laying wait for
you for stealing her jam?'

'Oh no,' said Roly.  'It's only this,' and
he pointed to his jersey; 'she doesn't think
it's religious to wear football things on Sunday.'

'Well,' said Floss, in the virtuous tone a
clean pinafore made justifiable, 'I don't think
it is, either.  Look at me.  I learnt a collect
this morning.'

'A what?' said Roly.

'A collect,' said Floss.  'Collect for the
thirteenth Sunday after Trinity.  Hermie
wasn't sure if this was the right Sunday, only
it was a nice short one to begin with.'

'Does Miss Hermie teach you your
collects?' asked Mortimer, his head turned
away a little.

'She wants to,' said Floss, 'but I don't
know if she'll always be able to find me.  She
was looking for Roly, too, this morning, only
he was playing Boers somewhere, so he got off.'

'Wasn't playing Boers,' said Roly.  'I was
putting a new name on our gate.'

'What a story you are!' cried Floss.  'I
saw you creeping along with father's guns.'

'Wasn't!' said Roly.  'Hadn't I got this
jersey on?'

'That's nothing; you sleep in it—truly he
does, Morty.  As soon as Hermie or Miss
Browne go out of the room, he puts on the
jersey over his pyjamas.  Why he hates school
is 'cause he can't go in it.'

'What name were you writing on the gate,
old fellow?' asked Mortimer, to save the
situation.

'Transvaal Vale,' said Roly; 'come on down
and see—it looks great.  I rubbed Hermie's
silly name off.'

But Mortimer did not move.  Dunks'
Selection the place had always been, and always
would be called; but Hermie in piteous
rebellion had written years ago in violet ink
on the sliprails, The Rosery.  Mortimer
would not go and look at the poor little name
defaced.

Miss Browne came out, Miss Browne with
her face shiny with recent washing, her hair
almost tidy, the better of her two colourless
gowns on her back.

'Very glad indeed to see you—very sorry
to keep you waiting so long—hope you, your
father is quite well—Bart, my dear, a chair—what
are you thinking of, to let Mr. Stevenson
sit on the step?—very sad about the
war—Flossie, don't tease Mr. Stevenson, my
dear—quite a cool day—providential thing the
drought has broken—hope you will stay to tea.'

These and sundry other remarks she delivered
breathlessly, and at the end put her
hand to her side and gasped gently.

'I shall be most pleased to stay, Miss Browne,
if it will be putting you to no inconvenience,'
Mortimer said.

'Most pleased—most happy—an honour—who
is so kind, so thoughtful—those English
magazines—and she had never thanked him
yet, and those delicious chocolates—too good
of him; most glad if he would stay—uncomfortable
house—unavoidable—bush, no
comfort—he would understand——'

'He knows he's not to take more than two
helpings of butter,' said Bart, with a twinkle
in his eye.

'Bart, my dear—oh, my love—your mother—what
would she say?—Mr. Stevenson—what
can he think?—my dear—oh, my love,' and
the poor lady withdrew in hot haste, to hide
the embarrassment Bart had plunged her into,
and to laboriously prepare tea.

'I see your father's come down generously,'
said Mr. Cameron, glancing up a moment from
his papers.  'Matthew Stevenson—that is your
father, of course—five thousand pounds, and
more if wanted, to the fund for the Bushmen's
Contingent.'

'Yes, that's the governor,' Mortimer said.
'He's red-hot on the war.  I believe if he were
five years younger, wild horses wouldn't keep
him back from volunteering himself.  You
must come up to Coolooli and have a chat
with him over it, Mr. Cameron.'

But Cameron was deep again in the war
correspondent's letter.

Bart went off to feed the calves—Roly
had vanished at the sound of Miss Browne's
footstep.

'Did you know our mother and Challis was
coming home, Morty?' said Floss.

'Bart just told me—yes, that will be very
nice for you, Flossie.  All will be well, now,
won't it?' said Mortimer.

'Oh, you're like the rest, are you?' Floss
said.  'Every one going to live happy ever
after, eh?  No, thank you, not me; I'm
always going to hate them.  They don't get
over me.  No, thank you.  I know them—bring
me a doll, won't they? and "There you
are, Flossie darling, sweetest, come and kiss
us."  Not me.  See my finger wet, see it dry,
cut my throat sure's ever I die, if I have
anything to do with them.  Stuck-ups, that's
what they are!'

Mortimer gazed on the child, a little
uncomfortable horror mixed with his amusement;
his bringing-up had been orthodox, and
reverence for parents was entwined with all his
life.

'Why, girlie,' he said, 'this is shocking!
Your own mother!'

'Challis's mother,' corrected Floss.  'Didn't
she go off and leave me?  Lot she cared!  I
was only two, Lizzie says, and I might have
picked up anything, and eaten it and died.
Even Mrs. Bickle minds her baby, although
she does get drunk at times.  S'pose I'd had
measles? or Roly?  We'd have died, or at
least got dropsy, Lizzie says, having no mother
to nurse us.  No, thank you—no getting
round me with a doll.  As for that Challis,
I'll give her a time of it—just you see.'

'But—but—but,' cried Mortimer, greatly at
a loss, 'your mother is as fond of you as
anything, of course.  I expect it is very hard
for her to go so long without seeing you.
She doesn't do it on purpose, old woman.
You see, Challis was so clever they had to
give her a chance.'

'How do they know I'm not clever?'
demanded Floss.  'I believe I am.  You should
have seen the man I drew on my slate this
morning.  Or how do they know I couldn't
play before the Queen?  I'm up to "What
are the Wild Waves Saying?" and it's got
two flats.'

Mortimer had no answer for this; he could
only gaze at her.

.. _`134`:

There was another step in the doorway, and
Hermie came out, a very slender-looking
Hermie in the let-down white frock that had
made a woman of her in a day.  Floss leaned
back and giggled as her sister shook hands
with the visitor.

'He! he! he!  She's put her long dress
on,' she said.  'Morty, look! it's as long as
Miss Browne's.  You'd think she never had
short ones, wouldn't you?  She's 'tending she's
growed up.'

'Flossie,' said Mortimer, 'wouldn't you like
to look at my watch? you haven't seen the
works for a long time.'

'Me holding it then,' stipulated Flossie.

'All right,' said Mortimer, and gave up
his valuable timekeeper into the bony little
outstretched hand.

'You spoil that child shockingly,' Hermie said.

Floss looked up from the entrancing little
wheels.

'He spoils you worser,' she said.  'Look
at the books and flowers and chocolates he
brings over and gives you, no matter how
bad-tempered you may be.'

Hermie looked vaguely disturbed.

'Spoil me—do you spoil me?  Surely I'm
too big,' she said.

The man's heart leapt to his eyes.

'Wish I'd the chance,' he muttered.

'What did you say?' said Hermie.

'Nothing,' said Mortimer, and began to
smoke furiously again.

'Morty,' said Floss, 'Morty, how many
times does the littlest wheel turn while the
big wheel turns once?'

'Thirteen,' Mortimer said recklessly.—'I
hear your mother is coming home, Miss
Cameron?'

'Yes,' sighed Hermie.

'This is surely very good news?'

Hermie gave a troubled glance around.

'Y-yes,' she said.

'Why, what a story you are, Morty!' said
Floss.  'It doesn't turn thirteen times.'

'I mean thirty,' said Morty.  'Miss
Cameron, I have three men loafing around at
the sheds, and can't find work for them to do.
It would be doing me a real kindness if you'd
let them put in their time straightening up
this place.'

'Thank you,' Hermie said, 'but we should
not like to employ men we were not paying.'

'Not when they're eating their heads off in
idleness?' implored Morty.

'No, thank you,' Hermie said stiffly.

'I beg your pardon,' Mortimer said dejectedly.

'I should think you do,' cried Floss; 'it
doesn't turn anything like thirty times.  I
wouldn't have a watch I didn't understand.
Here, take it.'

He pocketed it humbly.

'I'd like to see the ground Bart spoke of
sowing Burnett on,' he said, plunging away
from his mistake.  'Will you walk down with
me, Miss Cameron?  It is quite cool and
pleasant now.'

Hermie rose to her feet, then remembered
her shabby little shoes that she had all this
time been successfully hiding beneath her long
dress.

'Oh,' she said, 'it's too far.  Floss will go
with you, won't you, Floss?  I will go in and
help Miss Browne with tea.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`'I Love You'`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X


.. class:: center medium bold

   'I Love You'

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  'The bird of life is singing on the bough
   |  His two eternal notes of "I and Thou."'

.. vspace:: 2

It was after tea, and the long shadows of
the dusk had fallen so gently, so tenderly,
that even Dunks' selection had a beauty of its
own.

Mortimer sat on the verandah and talked
war to Mr. Cameron till his very soul loathed
the Transvaal.  Then he was captured by
Bart, and forced into the dining-room to
explain something in the *Town and Country
Journal*, and give his opinion on the merits
of Johnson's Grass.

And when he went outside again, Roly and
Floss hung upon his arms and begged and
begged him to 'come with us a bit.'

At eight o'clock he broke away from them,
and stumbled through the dark passage to the
kitchen regions to seek Miss Browne.

But here only an oil-lamp flickered in the
breeze; even Lizzie was away from her post,
having gone before tea to walk to Wilgandra,
in the urgent need of a little pleasant human
intercourse, ere she began another grey week.

There was a door open near by, and glancing
in Morty saw Miss Browne, seated at her cleared
dressing-table so busily writing and so
surrounded by little papers and letters he came
to a vague conclusion that she was 'literary.'

'Miss Browne,' he called imploringly.

She laid down her pen and hastened to the
door to him.

He seized both her hands, he pressed them,
he wrung them as he stood, labouring with
his excitement.

'Miss Browne,' he said, 'will you help me?
You must help—oh, do not refuse—she has
gone down the garden alone—I think she is
leaning on the gate.  I must go to her.  I
must go to her.  Will you keep them back—all
the others—could you get them in a room
and turn the key—how can I tell her if they
follow me like this?'

'Tell her—who—what—why?' said the
astonished Miss Browne.

'I love her,' said the man; 'I love her with
all my soul—I must tell her; you will help me?'

His face looked quite white; there was a
moisture on his forehead, his eager voice
shook.

Miss Browne was crying; she had taken one
of his big hands and was stroking it.

'Oh, my dear, my dear!' she said.  'How
beautiful, how very beautiful!  Oh, my love,
how sweet—oh, how sweet, my love!'

'You will help?' he said.  'You will keep
those little beggars away?'

'Leave it to me,' she said; 'you go to
her, down in the garden, and the dusk is
here, and the moon beginning to rise!  How
sweet, how beautiful!  And she has on a white
dress!  Don't trouble about anything, my
love—just go out to her.'  The happy tears
were gushing from her eyes.

'What a good sort you are!' he said, and
wrung her hand, and patted her shoulder, then
went plunging out into the sweet darkness to
tell his love.

He found her where the wattles grew
thickest, leaning on the fence, her flower-face
turned to the young rising moon.

'How did you know I was here?' she said.

'I knew,' he answered, and a long silence
fell.  'What are you thinking of?' he
whispered.

'I don't—know,' she said, and a strange
little sob shook in her throat.

His arm sprang round her.

'Oh,' he said, 'I love you—I do love you!
Dearest, dearest, I love you!  Do love me,
darling—I love you, I love you so!'

Hermie was trembling like the little leaves
around them—too surprised, too stricken with
the newness of the situation even to slip out
of his arms.  The pleased young moon smiled
down at them, the leaves whispered the news
all along the bush, an exquisite perfume of
flowers and trees and freshening grass rose
up to them.  How sweet something was—the
clasp about her waist, the kisses that had
rained upon her cheeks, the eager, beautiful
words that still were beating in her ears!

'Oh, I don't understand, I don't understand,'
said the excited girl, and burst into strange
tears, and tried to move from his arms, and
put a startled hand to her cheeks, to feel what
difference those kisses had made.

'Did I frighten you—did I frighten you,
my darling, my little girl?' he said.  'See
there, don't tremble, I will take my arm away.
It is too big and rough, isn't it?  There,
there, I won't even kiss you; let me hold
your hand, there.  You have only to understand
that I love you, that I have always loved
you—ever since you were a tiny thing of
twelve, and I used to ride this way just for
the pleasure of watching you.  You were like
no other child here, so slender and sweet and
white and pink, and all that shining hair
hanging round you.  I think I wanted you
always.  I wanted to pick you up and put
you on the saddle in front of me and ride
away with you—away and away right out of
the world.  You will let me, darling?  You
will try to love me a little?  You will be
my own little wife?'

Wife!  One of the Daly girls had just been
married to a boundary rider near.  Hermie
had seen the lonely place where they were
to live together with no one else to break
the monotony.

Wife!  All those dull, uninteresting women
who came to call in Wilgandra were wives, all
those dull, horrid men in Wilgandra were
their husbands.

Be married; she, Hermie Cameron, like the
girls in Miss Browne's books!  Perhaps it
might not be so very bad—they all seemed to
look forward to it.

But to Mortimer Stevenson!  Oh no, none
of them ever married any one like that, the
men there were all officers, penniless young
artists and authors, or at least earls.  Most
of them had proud black eyes and cynical
smiles, and spoke darkly of their youth.  Or
else they were debonair young men with
laughing blue eyes and Saxon curly hair.

Mortimer!  She had actually forgotten it
was only Mortimer speaking all this time,
Mortimer Stevenson, who wore red and blue
painful ties, and grew red if she spoke to him,
and knocked chairs over in his clumsiness, and
had never been anywhere farther than Sydney,
and thought Wilgandra and his father's station
the nicest places in the world.

A cloud came over the happy moon, the
leaves hung sad and still; from somewhere
far away came the piteous wail of the curlew.

Hermie freed her hand and found her voice.

'This is really ridiculous,' she said petulantly.
'I suppose you are in fun.'

'In fun!' he echoed dully.

'Yes, you can't really be serious.  Think
what a fearfully long time we have known
each other!  I'd as soon think of being married
to Bart, or Bill Daly.'

He winced at Daly—big, coarse, uneducated
bushman.

'If I waited a long time, couldn't you grow
to love me?' he said.  'I could stop doing
anything you don't like; I—I would go
through the University like James and Walter
did, if you liked.'

The exceeding pain in his voice touched the
girl's awakening heart.

'Forgive me, Morty,' she said, 'it must
seem very horrid of me.  I didn't understand
myself at first——'

'Perhaps—perhaps——' he began hopefully.

'No, I am sure, quite, quite sure I could
never love you,' she said decidedly.  'I shall
never marry, I have quite made up my mind.
There is no one I could ever care for enough.'

'Have you anything particularly against
me?' persisted Mortimer.  'I'd alter
anything; you don't know how I would try.'  His
voice choked.

She could not instance his ties, his clumsy
length of limb, his habit of furious blushing.

'You make it very hard for me,' she said.
'I—I wish you would go home; I want to
go to bed.'

'Forgive me,' he said humbly.  'Forgive
me; you have been very good and patient
with me.  I will go at once.'

Hermie looked for him to move.  He took
a step away from her—a step back—a step
away.  The sad moon came out and showed
her his blurred miserable eyes, his working
mouth.

'Oh, I am sorry—sorry!' she cried.

'May I kiss you—just once?' he whispered.

She stood still, her head drooped down, till
he lifted it, very gently, very tenderly, and
bent his head and put his quivering lips on hers.

Her hand went gently round his neck a minute.

'Poor Morty, dear Morty!' she said.  Her
breath came warm on his cheek one second,
and a feather kiss, a sweet little sorry kiss that
made his heart like bursting, was laid there.

The next second she had slipped away into
the darkness, and he was stumbling to find his
horse and carry his misery as far as he might.

Hermie went a circuitous route round the
back of the cottage, so anxious was she to
reach her bedroom without having her hot
cheeks challenged by the sharp eyes of Floss
or Roly.  And there on the back verandah,
where they never went, the two little figures
were sitting, one at either end with their backs
against a post.

'It's time you were in bed,' were the natural
words that sprang to her lips, when she found
she might not elude them.

Two laughs bubbled up.  'We're not going
to bed for hours,' they said; 'we're having a
'speriment.'

'A what?' said Hermie.

'See this,' said Floss, standing up, 'we're
both tied to the posts with the clothes-line.
Such larks!  Brownie said she wanted to try
a 'speriment on us, and see if we could sit still
for two hours.  If we do, she's going to give
me her little gold brooch, and Roly the green
heart out of her work-box.'

'We can swop them at school for usefuller
things,' interpolated Roly.

'The best is,' giggled Floss, 'we like sitting
still, we'd been running about all day.  And
she forgot to tell us not to speak to each
other, and she didn't put us too far to
play knuckle-bones.  I've wonned Roly three
times.'

But Hermie had gone in, an impatient doubt
as to Miss Browne's sanity crossing her mind.

She found Bart climbing out of the
dining-room window.

'Did you go doing that?' he demanded.

'What?' said Hermie.

'Lock the door while I was reading.'

'Of course I didn't,' Hermie said impatiently.

'It's that young beggar Roly,' Bart said;
'I'll have to take it out of him for this.  He'd
even jammed the window, and I'd no end or
work to get it open.  I want to go and help
father.'

'Where is he?' Hermie said.

'He's washing the paint-brushes in the
cowshed,' said Bart.  'Isn't it lucky?  Morty
says there are about three dozen tins of red
paint at his place, no earthly good to any one,
and he's going to send them down in the
morning, and dad and I are going to give all
the place a coat of paint before mother comes.'

Hermie went to her bedroom, shut the door,
and sat down by the window, glad of the
sheltering darkness.

But two or three feet away, at the next
window, sat Miss Browne, also in the dark,
Miss Browne, now crying happily into her wet
handkerchief, now looking at the moon and
whispering, 'Love, love, how beautiful, how
beautiful!'

The sound of footsteps, however, in the
adjoining room brought her swiftly outside
Hermie's window.

'Hermie!' she cried in a breathless tone
at the sight of the girl sitting there in her
white dress.  'That cannot be you?'

'Yes, it is,' said Hermie; 'why shouldn't
it be?'

'Oh, my love, my love!  It is hardly half
an hour.  I thought two hours, at the least.
My dear, my love, no one disturbed you?
Oh, my love, don't tell me Roly and Floss got
loose?'

'I don't know what you mean,' Hermie
said shortly, 'but I can't help thinking it is
rather ridiculous to keep those children sitting
there.  They ought to be in bed.  I am going
to bed.'

'To bed—my love—my dear!' gasped
Miss Browne.  'Where is he?'

'Where is who?' asked Hermie impatiently.

'M-M-Mr. M-Mortimer Stevenson,' said
Miss Browne in a whisper.

Hermie had her secret to hide.

'What should I know about Mr. Stevenson?'
she said coldly.  'I presume he has gone home.'

Gone home!  All could not have gone well
and happily in half an hour!  Miss Browne
grew quite pale.

Such a sweet half-hour it had been for her!
For twenty minutes of it she had thought of
nothing but the white light of love that was
going to flood Hermie's life.  But during the
last ten minutes there had come to her a
thought of the material advantages that would
accrue to the girl—Stevenson would have four
or five thousand a year at his father's death.
It had been very sweet to sit and think of dear
little flower-faced Hermie lifted for ever above
the sordid cares of wretched housekeeping.

'My love—my dear,' she faltered, 'I—I am
old enough to be your mother.  Could you
trust me—won't you——'

But Hermie, with the blind young eyes of
a girl, saw nothing outside her window but
tiresome Miss Browne, crying a little into her
handkerchief (she often cried), stammering out
sentences that seemed to have no beginning
or end (her sentences seldom had), twisting
her fingers about (she never kept them still).

This, when the girl's excited heart wanted
to be away from all voices, all eyes, and go
over the strange sensations, with the moon
alone for witness.

'Miss Browne,' she said, making a strong
effort not to speak unkindly, 'I have a
headache to-night, and want to be alone.
Would you be so kind as to keep what you
have to say till morning, and tell me then?'

Nothing could have been swifter than the
way Miss Browne melted away into the
darkness.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A Squatter Patriot`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI


.. class:: center medium bold

   A Squatter Patriot

.. vspace:: 2

It was eleven o'clock before Mortimer
reached home, not that Coolooli lay two
hours and a half distant from the selection,
but that he was trying to ride and ride till
the raw edges of his wound had closed together
somewhat.

Finally he remembered his father would be
waiting up for him—one of the old man's
fixed customs was to be the last one up in
his house—and he turned his mare's head in
the direction of the sleeping station.  He rode
up through the moonlit paddocks and the belts
of bush, and wondered a little, as he looked
at his home, that the sadness of the place had
never struck him before.

The house rose on the crest of a hill,
convict-built, most of it, in the very early
days of the colony, and with a wing or two
added here and there.  Large, thoroughly
comfortable, yet it stood there with a certain
air of sternness, as if it knew what unhappy
hands had laid its strong foundations, what
human misery built up its plain thick walls.

No creepers clung to it and wooed it with
their grace; no fluttering muslins, fashioned by
women's hands, blew about its plain windows.
In the wide garden that encircled it trees grew,
and handsome shrubs, but the flowers seemed
to know themselves for strangers there, and
came not.  Mortimer's eyes went to the twin
hill, half a mile away.

How often had he raised a house on that!
Not a grim, plain one, like this his home,
but a large sunny cottage, with wide verandahs
and large bright windows, and a garden
where all the sweet flowers in the world ran mad.

Near enough the big house for the old
man, left to himself, not to feel lonely; far
enough away for Hermie to be unquestioned
queen, and free as the winds that blew.

Oh, the happy hours he had wandered on
that farther hill, raising that happy home to
receive his love!  There had even been a
moonlight night or two when he had furnished
it—furnished it with deep chairs and wide
sofas and delicious hammocks, all for the little
light-haired girl who worked so hard on that
wretched selection to nestle into and rest.  He
had begun to work harder and give deeper
thought than was his wont to the management
of the station; there would be plenty of
money for an income, he knew, but he wanted
even more than plenty; he wanted the little
hands that had always been so afraid to
spend sixpence, to revel in the joy of flinging
sovereigns broadcast.  He had been waiting—waiting
to tell her, it seemed for years—waiting
till she was just a little older and a
little older.

But the long frock to-day had told him
she was a woman, and he had rushed to know
his fate; and now all was over.

He put his saddle in the harness-room, and
turned the horse out into the moonlit paddock.
He went in through the side door, down the
wide hall where the lamps still burned for
him, and into the dining-room.

His father was sitting at the big table
drinking very temperately at whiskey and water,
and reading a paper.

'I'm sorry to have kept you up, dad,'
Mortimer said.

'That's all right,' said his father, 'it's not
often you do it.'

'No,' said Mortimer.

The old man pushed the spirit-casket across
the table.

'You look as if you've got a chill,' he said;
'take a nip.'

The son poured himself a finger's depth,
and drank it off, his father watching him from
under his shaggy eyebrows.

'Did Luke or Jack come up this afternoon?'
asked Mortimer.

'Jack and his wife,' said the old man.
'Luke went to Sydney yesterday, Jack says,
to watch the sales himself.'

'Take Bertha with him?'

'I rather think the young woman took him.
Don't believe she's the wife for any squatter;
Macquarie Street's the only run she'll ever
settle on, with the theatres and dancing halls
within cooey.'

'Oh, well,' sighed Mortimer, 'Luke can
afford it, and he seems happy enough.
Anything fresh about the war?  You seem to have
all the papers there.'

The old man's eyes gleamed, his hand
trembled as he reached for an evening paper,
and opened it.

'See here,' he said, 'Buller's made a fatal
mistake, a fatal mistake.  He's advancing on
Ladysmith by this route, wheeling here and
doubling there, and having a brush or two on
the way.  Now, what he ought to have done
is plainly to have gone along by night marches
up here, and taken up a strong position here.
See, I've marked the way he ought to have
gone with those red dots.  You don't look
as if you agree.'

'Oh,' said Mortimer, 'I don't know anything
about it.  But I should say those Johnnies
at the head of things know what they're about
better than we can out here.'

'Not a bit, not a bit,' said the old man
excitedly; 'it's always the looker-on who sees
the most.  He's just rushing on to his doom,
and those brave chaps shut up in that
death-trap'll never get as much relief from this
attempt as they would if I sent old Rover
out.  You mark my words and see.  This
range of hills is the key of the position, and
until those thick-headed generals can be brought
to see it, there'll be defeat after defeat.  Did
I tell you Blake and Lewis and Walsh and
Simons came to me, and asked to volunteer?'

'Whew!' said Mortimer.  'I don't see how
we'll get along without Blake.  Did you give
your consent?'

'Consent!' cried the old man.  'If the
place went to ruin, d'ye think I'd keep the
fellow back?  I gave him a cheque, and I
promised to look after his wife and brats if
he fell; that's what I did.'

'But it's unlucky Walsh wants to go too,'
said Mortimer; 'he'd have been the very
fellow to take Blake's place.  We could have
better spared Doherty.'

'That mean-spirited dog!  A lot of volunteering
there is in him.  He'll take good care to
keep his cowardly carcase out of bullet range.'

Mortimer looked thoughtful, and poured
a little more whiskey into his tumbler.

'I suppose we must get fresh men on in
their places straight away,' he said; 'we don't
want the place to suffer.'

'Hang the place!' shouted the old man;
'let it go to ruin if it likes.  Every man that
has the pluck to come and tell me he'll go
and shoot at them scoundrels out there, hang
me, it's a cheque I'll give 'im, and be a father
to his brats if he's got any, and keep his place
open till he comes back.  And a horse to
each—the best I've got on the place—hang
me, two horses.'

'It's very generous of you, father,'
Mortimer said, a little unsteadily.  'I see,
too, by yesterday's paper, you are giving five
thousand pounds to the fund.  I—hardly knew
you felt as strongly about it as this.'

The old man sprang up, and began to
thunder about the room.

'Feel strongly about it—strongly!  If I was
only ten years younger, I'd do more than feel
strongly!  Me very bed's like stones the
nights the cables show no victories; the food
in me mouth turns to dust.  Feel strongly!'

Mortimer left the table, and stood at the
window looking out at the moonlight that
made snow of the twin hill.  He did not
know he drummed on the window pane until
his excited father roared to him to stop.
Then he turned and went across the room
to where his father was sitting again at the
table, gazing with furious eyes at the cables
that told of Buller's line of march.

'Father,' he said, and put his hand on the
old man's shoulder, 'will you give me a couple
of horses?  I don't know that I want the
cheque.'

Old Stevenson trembled.  'You're fooling
me,' he said.

'I wouldn't fool when you're so much in
earnest,' Mortimer said.  'I'm afraid I'm a
slow-witted chap.  It never occurred to me
before to-night to volunteer.  Now it seems
the one thing I'd care to do in all the world.'

The old man breathed hard.

'I'm not as young as I was, Morty,' he
said quaveringly; 'I—can't take disappointments
easy.  You're not just saying this
lightly?  You'll abide by it?'

'The only thing that could stand in my
way,' said Mortimer, 'would be your objection.
That is removed, since it never existed; so it
only remains to find out the date of the sailing
of the Bush contingent.  Thanks to your
subscription, there'll be no difficulty in getting
me in, for I know my riding and shooting will
pass muster.'

'Morty,' the old man was clinging to the
young one's arm, 'Morty, I'd given up the
hope of ever seeing this day.  Six sons I
had—six, and not a puny, poor one among them.
That's what held me up when the war got
into me veins first, and I had to face it that
seventy was too old to fight.  It took some
facing, lad.  After that I just waited and
waited.  And none of you spoke.  I kep'
reading the Sydney news, to find that my sons
there was going.  None of their names was
in.  Dick, I could ha' forgave him—p'r'aps—as
he's six childers and a wife; but James, a
doctor, no end of chances to get in.  And
Walter, the best shot and best horseman ever
come from out back.  Never a word that
Walter had blood in his veins.  I thought it
might be funds stoppin' 'em—they might be
feared to leave their businesses, thinking they'd
suffer.  No need of that, I thinks, and sends
them a cheque a-piece—a solid thousand each.
Does that fetch 'em?  Not it.  They writes
back, very useful, come in nicely.  Jack here,
married to a wife, wouldn't mind going—see
some life; but wife cries and clings, and he
gives in.  Luke!  No son of mine.  Oh, I'll
not cut him out my will, or do anything dirty
by him, but don't never let him give me his
hand no more.  Cries down his own people,
upholds the dirty scoundrelly Boers, and hopes
they'll win their fight; dead against the Britain
that his own father comed from.  My only
lad left at home——'

'Well, that laggard at least is off to shoot
his best,' said Mortimer lightly.

'Morty,' said the old man, and pressed his
hand, 'you'll ha' to forgive me.  I've had
hard thoughts of you, Morty.'  His faded
eyes were suffused.

'Don't let's think of that, dad,' said
Mortimer.  'What horses do you think I'd
better take?'

'In the morning, in the morning,' said
Stevenson.  'I only want to sit still to-night,
and thank God I've got one son that's a man.'

Mortimer looked at the creased, illumined
face, the wet eyes, the old, working mouth.
His heart swelled towards him.

'Dad, old fellow,' he said, 'I'm hard hit.
I love a girl, and she won't have me.'

His father gripped his hand.

'Poor chap, poor chap!' he said.  'I know,
I've been through it.  I loved a girl before I
married your mother, and I met her daughter
the other day, and it was the same as if it had
been yesterday.' He looked at his big son
with new eyes.  'The girl's got hanged bad
taste,' he said.

'You'd have liked her, dad,' Morty said.
'Not like the girls round here, big, strapping
women; very slender and sweet-looking, her
skin's as pink and soft as that baby of Jack's.'

'Happen I know her?' said his father.

'Her name is Hermie Cameron,' Mortimer said.

'That thriftless beggar's daughter!' was on
the old man's lips, but the look on his son's
face checked him.

'Yes—a pretty child,' was what he said
instead, and thanked Heaven that her taste
had been so bad.

'See here, dad,' Mortimer said awkwardly,
'of course it's not in the least likely I shall
get hit—-but of course war's war, and there's
a chance that one may get knocked over.'

'I don't need telling that,' said the old man
quickly.

Mortimer pressed his shoulder.  'It's this,
dad,' he said.  'I want to ask you a favour
The Camerons—they're so hard up, it—it
makes me fairly miserable.'

'A cheque, lad,' said the father eagerly,
'of course, of course.  Would a thousand
pounds do?  You shall have it to-night—this
minute.'

He was moving to get his cheque-book, but
Morty detained him.

'No, no, dad,' he said, 'you don't know
poor Cameron; he's the most unfortunate
fellow in the world, but he's the last man
who would take a present of money.'

'I could offer it as a loan,' suggested the
old man.

'No, he wouldn't have even that, I'm
positive,' Mortimer said.  'I've tried a time
or two myself, but he's choked me off jolly
quickly.'

'Then what can I do, boy?' the father
said helplessly.  'Believe me, I'm willing
enough.'

'I know, I know, dad.  All I want to ask
you is to keep an eye on them, and if you
can do them a turn, do it.  The mother's
coming from England in a month or so, and
I'd give my head to be able to make the place
look up a bit.  Cameron and his boy are
fairly killing themselves to do their best, but
you can guess what their best is when there's
only labour and not a sixpence to spend.'

'You leave it to me, leave it to me,' said
Stevenson.

'And one other thing,' said Morty.  'Of
course I won't, dad, but if I should come a
cropper, will you let some of my share go to
the little girl I wanted?'

'She shall have every penny of it,' cried the
old man; 'hang me, it's the least I can do.'

They gripped hands.

'Good-night, boy!'

'Good-night, dad!'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`R.M.S. Utopia`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII


.. class:: center medium bold

   R.M.S. Utopia

.. vspace:: 2

'There,' said Challis, 'that is exactly the
middle of the sheet, mother.  Just as
many again, and we're all kissing each other
and going mad.'

She held a piece of note-paper in her hand,
and had just carefully marked out with a red
pencil one more of the thirty-three days of
their voyaging.

'That leaves just sixteen,' said Mrs. Cameron.

'And a half,' said Challis, 'and Mr. Brooks
told me the captain says we may be two whole
days late, so we'll count seventeen, darling, and
not disappoint ourselves.'

'There is the captain now, talking to
Mrs. Macgregor and Lady Millbourne,' said
Mrs. Cameron.  'Run and ask him, dear, if it is
true.  I can't bear the thought.'

'Oh, mother,' said the little girl, and hung
back, looking with nervous eyes at the group.

'Girlie, you must get over this silly
shyness,' said Mrs. Cameron.  'I think you get
worse every day, instead of better.  Run along
at once.'

The girl rose and walked slowly down the
long deck.  Some children rushed to her.

'Come and play, come and play,' they said.
'It's rounders, and we want another on our
side.'

'Don't ask her,' said a boy, 'she's a
stuck-up—never plays with any one.'  The voice
reached Challis, and coloured her cheeks.

'You will be on our side, won't you?' a
little girl said.  'We don't know what to
do for another.'

'I—I don't know how to play.  I'm very
sorry—if I could I would,' Challis said.

'Oh, but you can't help knowing,' urged
the small girl.  'All you've to do is hit
the ball and run.  Mamma's deck-chair there
is one rounder, and the barometer thing's
another, and that life-buoy's the third, and
here's home.  Of course you mustn't hit the
ball overboard.'

'Oh, please,' said Challis, 'won't you get
some one else?  I should spoil the game.  Oh,
I couldn't play—please,' and she broke away
from the hand, and heard 'stuck-up' again
from the boy as she moved away.

Used to the fire of a thousand eyes, the
girl shrank nervously from disporting herself
before half a dozen idle watchers.  She liked
the quiet corners on the deck where no one
could see her; she had a habit of lying on
some cushions by her mother's side, and
pretending to be asleep, just to escape being
talked to.

A group of ladies drew her amongst themselves
before she could pass.

'The sweet little thing!' said one.

'Have you been dreaming a Wave Nocturne
up in your corner?' said another.

'Don't tease the child,' said a third.
'Darling, we're getting up a concert for
to-morrow evening, and we're going to give the
money to the Patriotic Fund when we get
to Sydney.  You will play some of your
lovely pieces for us, won't you?  You know
we couldn't have a concert without the aid
of the famous Miss Cameron.'

'I am afraid mother will not allow me to
again,' Challis said.  'She said yesterday was
to be the last time.'

'The last time!  Oh, why—why?' chorused
the ladies.

'She said something about wanting me to
rest now,' said poor Challis, flushing.

'Oh, but just two or three little pieces,'
persisted the promoter of the concert, 'for
the wives of the brave boys going to the
war!  Oh, I know you won't refuse us, will
you?  That pretty little thing you played
for the funds of the Sailors' Home on
Monday—what was that?'

'The Funeral March from Chopin's Second
Sonata,' said Challis shyly.  'I will ask
mother.  I am sure, as it is for the soldiers,
she will allow me,' and she edged out of the
group.

A lady lying on a lounge beckoned to her.

'How are you, my dear, to-day?' she said.

'Quite well, thank you,' was Challis's answer.

'You are looking pale, I think.  Your
mother should give you quinine.  Don't you
ever take anything before you play to your
big audiences?'

'No,' said Challis.

'Your mother should see you have a
quinine powder before you begin, and just
before going home a dessert-spoonful of malt
extract.  It would fortify the system immensely.'

'Would it?' said Challis, a little wearily.

'Is that little Miss Cameron?' said another
lady, coming up.  'Now I think Mrs. Goodenough
might really introduce us.  Ah, now
we know each other, and I am very proud—very
proud indeed to shake hands with
Australia's celebrated player.  I heard you in
the Albert Hall two nights before we left
London, my dear.  You play magnificently—magnificently.'

Challis stood with gravely downcast eyes,
and never said a word.

'I wonder could you spare me a photograph,
my dear,' continued the lady, 'one of those
in a white frock that are all over London?
And I should like you to write your name
across it.  Will you?'

'We have not any left—we gave the last
away,' said Challis, and with a little good-bye
bending her head—something like the grave
quiet bend she gave her audiences—she moved
along on her errand.

'So that's your player,' the flouted lady
said.  'Well, I don't think much of her.
Not a word to say for herself.  I suppose
she is greatly overrated; it is mostly
advertisements, you know—wonderful nowadays
what can be done by advertisements.'

Challis reached the captain at last.  Lady
Melbourne had a pleasant word for her, and
asked nothing but how she was enjoying
*Treasure Island*, which was in her hand.
Mrs. Macgregor merely inquired after her
mother's headache.

'Captain,' Challis said, 'are we really going
to be two days late?  Mother is very anxious.'

'Why, we are all hoping it will be more
than that,' said Lady Millbourne.  'A perfect
voyage like this should last for ever.  I want
to persuade the captain to break the shaft
of his propeller, like the Perthshire did, and
let us drift for forty days.'

'Then mother and I would steal the
captain's gig and row home by ourselves,'
Challis said with a little shy roguery that
dimpled her mouth, and made you think she
was pretty after all.

'I never loved a dear gazelle,' said the
captain, 'but I had to land it days before I
should have had to, if it had only been a
tiresome elephant.  My dear little fairy-fingers,
I have to give you up two days before the
time.  This will be the quickest run I've
made this year.'

The glad colour leapt all over the girl's face.
'Oh-h-h!' she cried, and broke away from
them, and went bounding back along the deck
to her mother, just as any of the children
might have gone.

The delightful news necessitated giving all
the rest of the morning up to happy chat.
They drew their chairs close up together,
sheltered from over-much observation by the
angle of the deck-house.  Mrs. Cameron had
no more headache, *Treasure Island* fell flat
and forgotten on the deck.'

.. _`'NOW LET'S JUST GO OVER IT ALL AGAIN,' SAID CHALLIS.`:

.. figure:: images/img-170.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: 'NOW LET'S JUST GO OVER IT ALL AGAIN,' SAID CHALLIS.

   'NOW LET'S JUST GO OVER IT ALL AGAIN,' SAID CHALLIS.

'Now let's just go over it all again,' said
Challis.  'Father'll come first.  I don't want
to kiss any one till I have kissed him.  Well,
what's he like?  No, don't you say, I'll say.
He'll have a moustache—no, I think he'll have
a beard—yes, a beard.  Not a long one, just a
short one, and rather curly.  And his eyes have
a nice laughing look in them, just the nice
look like M'sieu de Briot's, who said there
was nothing in the world worth worrying about.
You said, didn't you? that daddy hated worrying
over things.  I can't help thinking he'll have
a brown velveteen jacket when he comes to
meet us, like Mr. Menel's, at Fontainebleau,
and paint all over it.  But of course he won't.
Let's see, he'll have a grey suit and a shiny hat,
like Mr. Warner.  No, he mustn't have that—that's
not like daddie at all.  No, I'll tell you;
it's very hot at Wilgandra, so he'll have a nice
white linen suit and a white helmet, and he
might—he might be holding up a big white
umbrella lined with green—you know, mamma,
like that nice man who came on board at Malta.'

Mrs. Cameron was leaning back, her eyes
shining, a fond smile on her lips as she listened
to the girl's prattle.

'Then there'll be Hermie, and I know she's
lovely.  Don't you think she will be?  You
said you always thought she would grow up
very beautiful.  Oh, isn't it dreadful that we've
never had a photo of them?  Such lots of
mine sent to them, and never any of theirs!
It's like drawing their faces with your eyes
shut.  I think Hermie will have her hair in a
thick plait.  I suppose she goes to picnics and
dances and everything, and always knows what
to say to people.  Mother, I don't think I shall
ever get to know what to say.  I'm fourteen,
and nothing will come into my head to answer
people.  A lady said to me this morning, "You
play magnificently."  Now what can you answer
to that?  I really felt I'd like to say, "Yes,
don't I?" just to see how she would look.  Only
I was afraid it would be rude.  If I'd said, "Oh
no, I don't, you're mistaken," she would have
thought I was mock modest, wouldn't she?
But Hermie, yes, she'll always know what to say.
I can sleep in her room, can't I?  You said
there wouldn't be any other.  It will be like
Ellen and Edie Fowler we met on the trip to
Dover; they always had their arms round each
other, and used to tell each other everything
and everything.  Hermie and I will; we'll
whisper and whisper all night, just like they did.'

The steward came up with eleven-o'clock tea
and the glass of milk that Challis always drank.
Mrs. Cameron left her cup to grow cold,
Challis set her tumbler in an insecure place,
and a lurch of the ship sent it flying.

'Never mind, I couldn't have drunk it,' she
said, then as the man came back, 'I am so
sorry to give you that trouble, steward.  If
you like to bring a cloth, I'll wipe it up
myself.'

'Well, about Bart,' said the mother, 'what
will Bart be like?'

'Oh, Bart,' said Challis, 'I just feel as if
we'll rush straight together, and never come
undone again.  That's the sort of feeling you
have when you're twins.  I feel I'd like to
give him everything and sew his buttons on
and let him bully me.  You notice the
Griffithses here.  They're twins, and she does
everything he tells her, and he gets everything
for her.  It's lovely.  I hope Bart hasn't
forgotten we're twins.'

'And Roly?'

'Roly?  I'm not sure of Roly.  I can
hardly see him at all.  I think, p'r'aps, he's
like that little boy at our table who wears
Eton suits and tries to walk like the
boatswain.  All I can remember about Roly is
one day we were eating water-melon in the
paddock, and Roly ate his slice away and away,
till there was just a green circle round his head.'

'And Flossie—my little baby Floss?'

'Darling little Flossie, I almost love her
best of all.  She's got very goldy hair and a
teeny little face, and she's as little as Lady
Millbourne's little girl.  And she likes being
carried about, and she can't dress herself, and
I shall dress her, and fasten all the dear little
buttons, and tie her sashes.  And I shall put
her to bed myself, nobody else must, and I'll
tell her stories and stories.  And every day
there'll be something new for her out of my
box.  There are fifteen things for her, mother,
not counting what she's to go halves with
Roly in.  Isn't it a darling little tea-set?  I
never saw such sweet little cups.  And won't
she like the little dolls from the Crystal
Palace?  I'd really like to play with them
myself.  And the big doll we got in the Rue
de Crenelle.  I must get on with its frock
to-morrow, mother, or it never will be done.'

On, on went the ship through the secret
waters.  New stars came out on the great
night skies, new breezes played in the rigging.
On, on, and the long days dropped away,
somewhere, somewhere, beyond the edge of
the sea.  On, on, and the happy eyes saw
at last the dear frown of the Australian
coast-line.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`The Bush Contingent`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   The Bush Contingent

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |      'Armed year—year of the struggle!
   |  No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you, terrible year.
   |  Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipped cannon—
   |  I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.'

.. vspace:: 2

Cameron was in Sydney again—the
first time for seven long years.
He had come down almost a month before
the date upon which the Utopia was advertised
as due, with the desperate hope of getting
something to do that might yield him enough
money to buy a new suit.

Up on the selection he wore soft shirts and
old tweed trousers almost all the time.

When it came to a question of finding him
starched shirts and a decent suit and hat in
which to face his wife, Hermie and Miss
Browne were nonplussed.

Finally they discovered one suit that had
not been taken, piecemeal, to work in; but
the moths had also discovered it.  Sponge and
press and darn as Hermie might, it still looked
disreputable; the shirts were ragged, there
was no hat that was not hopelessly spoiled
with the sun and dust and rain.

It forced itself upon Cameron that there
was but one thing to do—he must borrow a
few pounds from some one.

And there was but one man he knew who
would lend it to him—Mortimer Stevenson.
Hermie had never told her secret.  He
groomed Tramby up a little, and put on a
linen coat and hat, and set out in the direction
of Coolooli.  He hoped he might not meet
the father; he was quite conscious of the fact
that the business-like, successful old man looked
upon him as a shiftless beggar.  They knew
each other slightly; Stevenson had ridden in
two or three times when passing the selection,
and stayed for an hour or two talking stock
and crops and the war.  Once or twice
Cameron had been for dinner to Coolooli while
shearing was on, and there were chances to
learn successful methods.  But he shrank with
all his soul from encountering the old man
this morning.

Two or three aboriginal women were coming
back from a journey to the house, cloths
full of stores and broken food slung over
their shoulder.  Stevenson forty years ago had
had to break up a big camp of them on the
land he had just taken up, and drive them
farther west.  Ever since he had not felt
justified in refusing food to any of their
colour.

Cameron stopped the women, to ask if they
had seen Mortimer riding away that morning.

'I say, Mary,' he said, 'you been see that
one Mr. Mortimer?'

'Ba' al mine see 'im that one young pfeller
Stevenson walk about,' said the most ancient
of the women.  'Old pfeller Stevenson 'im
up there.  You gib it tik-a-pen, you gib it
plenty pfeller 'bacca.'

Cameron threw her a bit of precious tobacco,
which she proceeded at once to cut up and
cram into her unsavoury-looking pipe.  Then
he rode on; Mortimer might by chance have
gone out somewhere on the run before the
women had reached the station.  Half a mile
nearer to the house a sundowner had been put
on to mending a fence.  At present he was
smoking and looking at it occasionally.

'Going up to volunteer, mate?' he said,
as Cameron rode through a gate.

Cameron disclaimed the honour.

'Take a tip and do it,' the fellow said.
'The old chap is off his nut just now, and is
jolly well flinging his money round—him as
was too close to give a fellow tucker without
turning him on to axe-sharpening first.  You'll
get your fare to Sydney and a moke and
pocket of tin handed over to you afore you've
finished of telling him you want to join.'

Cameron inquired good-humouredly why
under such exceptional circumstances he himself
did not volunteer.

He grinned.  'Guv'nor's knowed me on
and off for twenty year,' he said, and fell to
looking at the work before him again.  'Seems
to think I've had too much bush experience.
Had a try on, of course, but Mister Mortimer
he put the stopper on me.  I'm cursing my
luck for not waiting till he'd gone.'

'Gone!' said Cameron; 'why, where's he going?'

'He went larst Monday—you must be a
just-come not to know,' the man said; 'he's
goin' off to glory along o' the Swaggies
Army.'

Cameron turned his horse's head and rode
slowly back to the selection.

He took a picture or two, and tried to sell
them in Wilgandra, but they were still frameless,
and he only raised a pound by the sale
of both.

It was his neighbour Daly who helped him
most; he saved him his fifty shilling railway
ticket by sending him to Sydney in charge of a
dozen trucks of sheep.

Landed there after the almost intolerable
journey, he tried desperately for work—even
beat up an old friend or two, who looked
askance at his shabby appearance.  One offered
him a pound which he could ill spare, having
fallen on hard times himself, the other wrote
him half a dozen useless recommendations to
various business men.

Cameron hung around the quay in a sort
of fascination; no pilot boat went out but he
did not tremble, no great ship came round
Bradley's Head but he felt it bore his wife on
board.  The transports sent from the Cape
for the Bush Contingent—The Atlantian and
the Maplemore—were already anchored out
in the stream, the great numbers painted
on their sides adding an unusual note to the
shipping on the smiling harbour.  Launches
and heavily weighed boats bearing timber for
the horse-boxes were continually putting off
from the quay to cross the intermediate stretch
of water to where they lay.

The bustle and movement woke Cameron
to life again, and the knowledge that he must
do something, if it were only to take a header
into the plentiful water; not here at the quay
where a thousand eyes would see, but from
one of the quiet bays or headlands the harbour
has so many of.

Then he pulled himself together again,
recognised it was want of food that had begot
such cowardice in him, and spent his last
shilling on a good meal.  After that he
tramped out to Randwick to the camp, and
asked for Private Mortimer Stevenson.

The sentry jerked his head in a certain
direction, and Cameron made his way to where
some ten thousand perhaps of Sydney's citizens,
women and children, had crowded, as they
crowded almost every afternoon, for the novelty
of seeing the bushmen drill.

It was an odd, unmilitary spectacle.
Uniforms were not yet served out, and there
seemed no regularity as to height.  Here a
sunburnt fellow from 'out back' drilled in
a tattered flannel shirt and a pair of ancient
moleskins that had seen several hard shearing
seasons.  Next to him was some wealthy
squatter's son in a well-cut light grey suit,
then a rough fellow with a beard half a foot
long, moleskins again, and an old red
handkerchief tied round his throat, then a lad, a
fine well-grown fellow in the white flannels
he played tennis in on his far-off station.
None of the pomp, the *éclat* of militarism
was there—not even the discipline; the men
gossiped cheerfully with each other even while
they stood in their ranks, they laughed at the
girls in the crowd—even threw kisses to them.
They were a fine, independent-looking lot,
and you knew at a glance at them that they
would think no more of carrying their lives
in their hands than most people think of
carrying umbrellas.  But you marvelled how
they were to assume in so few weeks' time
the well-groomed, spick-and-span, automatic
appearance you had hitherto associated with
the word soldiers.

Cameron watched the different squads for
a little time, and felt proud of Mortimer when
he found girls and men were pointing him out
and saying.  'That one, look! the fourth from
the end; he's a splendid-looking fellow, isn't
he?'  'See that fourth chap, that's the sort
of man we want to represent us.'

But the drilling and the hoarse cries of the
hardworked sergeants seemed endless, and
Cameron wandered on and watched the riding
and shooting tests which separated the genuine
bushmen from the counterfeits, who swarmed
here, as easily as the winnow separates the grain
from the chaff.  At last the squads broke up,
and the men mixed with the crowd or went
off, mopping their steaming faces, to their
tents or the canteen.

Mortimer broke loose from the men around
him, and went instantly to Cameron, whom he
had quickly seen while drilling.  He carried
him off direct to his tent.

'I'm awfully sorry to have kept you waiting
so long,' he said.  'Here, try this deck-chair,
it's more comfortable than that bench.  And
what will you have to drink?  Oh, I know, you
like lemon squash.'  He turned to a
rough-looking fellow at the door.  'Go down to the
canteen, Brady, like a good fellow, and get a
jug of lemon squash.  Here's the money.'  He
turned back to Cameron.  'I'd have given
anything to get away when I saw you, but
you can guess what it is out there.'

'Yes, yes,' said Cameron, 'it doesn't matter;
it was all interesting.  I have been looking
about.'

Mortimer gave him a sharp look.

'Is all well up there?' he said.  'It isn't
often you come down.'

'Nothing's wrong,' said Cameron, 'I came
down to meet my wife, that's all.'

'Of course, of course,' said Mortimer;
'stupid of me.  I was reading about it only
this morning in the paper—about the big
welcome the citizens intend to give your little
girl.  There is to be a launch—the Government
launch, isn't it?—and the mayor and no end
of people are going up the harbour to meet her.'

'Are they?' said Cameron.

'You've been consulted about it, surely?'
said Mortimer warmly.  'They're not doing
all this without referring to you?'

Cameron straightened himself a little.

'I've had no fixed address since I came
down,' he said.  'They've overlooked me, I
suppose, because they don't know I exist; I
hardly do, you know.'

'Are any of the others down with you?'
asked Mortimer—'Bart or Roly or any of them?'

'Oh no,' said Cameron.  'Some one has
to mind the landed property against my return.'

'And are they all well?' pursued Mortimer.
'Roly—wasn't Roly looking a little thin before
I left?'

'Oh no,' Cameron said, 'he's right enough.
The girls feel the life more than he and Bart.
My eldest girl seemed very off colour when
I left?'

'Not typhoid?' burst out Mortimer.  'I
saw in the paper it had broken out in
Wilgandra——'

'Oh no, we're too far for that.  Nothing
but the heat.  Was that Timon I saw among
the horses?'

'Yes, I brought him and the governor's
favourite roan down—he made me have him.'

'Mortimer—I'm compelled to ask—I
cannot do without—my wife—Challis—suit—make
them ashamed——' Cameron's voice
choked.

'Confound that Brady!' said Mortimer,
springing up and upsetting his chair; 'takes
as long to get a lemon squash as if I'd sent
him to town for it.  If it had been a bottle
of whiskey, now, no delay then; might come
in for a spare glass himself.  You r'mber
Brady, rouseabout up at Coolooli, gives a
home-touch to see him about.  He volunteered
the same time as I.  I say, I'm off duty now
for the rest of the day—may as well come
back to town and have a bit of spree.  Brooks,
I say Brooks, go and see if there's a spare
cab, there's a good fellow.'  Another coin
went into another rough fellow's hand.

Cameron found himself driving back to
town by Stevenson's side before he had
collected his thoughts—or even had his lemon
squash.

Half the way Mortimer rattled on about
the day's work in camp, the transports,
provisions for the comfort of the horses, the
prospect of the contingent's success.

'By the way,' he said all at once, 'I want
you to do me a favour.  The governor's been
too free with his cash for me—not safe to
have too much about, you know—tempt some
poor devil.  D'ye mind taking some of it
and looking after it for me—just for a year
or two till I get back?  Use it, you know;
you might use it now instead of drawing
any out of your own account, then when I
come home you can pay me back.  Awfully
obliged it you will; had a couple of pounds
stolen out of my tent yesterday, and have
been going about with fifty pounds on me
since.  I'll get you to look after thirty of it;
the governor's cabled no end of money to a
bank in Durban for me, for fear I'll run short.'

Half a dozen crisp notes were thrust into
Cameron's hands, and Mortimer, hot and red
in the face, was rattling on again about the
horse-boxes for the voyage, and how they
should have been made this way, and not that
way, and about the wisdom of telling the
men to bring their own saddles, and about
that egregious ass the public, who seemed to
think the Bushmen were so thin-skinned that
they could not bear a word of command,
unless it was put in the form of a polite request.

'Isn't it tommy-rot?' said Mortimer.
'We're not a pack of sensitive girls.  We
enjoy the discipline, and recognise we have to
be licked into some sort of order, unless we
want to remain a mob.'

Cameron was very quiet, but he gripped
Mortimer's hand on parting, and cleared his
throat to try to say something.

But the young volunteer found he must be
off in violent haste.

'By George,' he said, 'haven't another
minute; promised the colonel I'd go out and
kick up a row about the horse-boxes,' and his
big loose figure plunged back to the waiting
cab.  'You'll come and see me off, all right,
so long'; and the cab woke to life and moved
smartly off, to lose itself in the stream of
vehicles going towards the quay.

Cameron, a lump in his throat, turned towards
the General Post Office, to see if there were
further news from the little contingent at home.
The last letters from Bart had been disquieting;
Small, the butcher, it seemed, had transferred
the mortgage he held on the selection to old
Mr. Stevenson.  'And Daly says,' Bart had
written, 'it's about the worst thing that could
have happened, Stevenson's so close-handed.
Small often used to give you time, but he
says Stevenson never will.'  A second letter
followed.  Stevenson had foreclosed, but was
willing for a year or two, until a tenant he
had in view was ready to occupy, that Cameron
should remain on the place.  In the meantime,
however, he, Stevenson, must be at liberty to
make any alteration or improvement he saw
fit to the property.

The present letter was excited in tone.
'After all, dad,' the boy wrote, 'I believe it's
the best thing that could have happened.  The
place is looking up no end, there are quite ten
men at work on it, so the chances are the
mater and Challis won't quite die of the
shock of seeing it.  And what do you think?
You know that calf we gave Hermie two
years ago?  Well, I never knew there was
good blood in it, did you?  It's the last
thing you'd think to look at it.  But that
Stevenson knows a thing or two.  He comes
down here and pokes about pretty often, and
he saw it, and what did you think?  Offered
me ten pounds down for it!  I couldn't believe
my ears.  Don't you remember I tried to sell
it when you were ill, and Small offered two for
it?  But I wasn't going to let on I was so
green as not to know it was a good sort, and
I said straight that we could not let it go under
fifteen.  He looked at me in that queer, sharp
way of his, and he poked at the calf a bit, and
then said, "Say twelve ten."  But I'd got my
mettle up by that.  I knew if a close-handed,
hard chap like that offered twelve ten, it must
be worth quite twenty-five.  I just turned
round and went on digging up the potatoes for
dinner and said, "Fifteen pounds," for all the
world like Small does at the sales.  He went
round to Dimple and began poking at her again,
and examining her like anything, and then he
said, "Fourteen pounds, sonny."  I'd got enough
potatoes out for Miss Browne by then, so I
put them in the basket and just said, "Good
morning, sir," and pretended to be going.

'Then he began laughing fit to kill himself,
and in between the laughs he said, "Fifteen,"
and I said, just like Small, "She's yours, and
you've got a bargain."  And he laughed again,
and said, "I have."  I hope you're not vexed,
dad, at me doing this on my own.  I've been
feeling very anxious ever since, for she must
have been a really valuable little thing—he's
not the man to be deceived; they say he's the
best judge of stock in the country.  I told
Daly about it, and he wanted to know if
Stevenson was drunk at the time.  He doesn't
drink at all, does he?  But I thought you'd
agree that the fifteen would be more use to us
now than twenty-five later, and that's why I
closed with him.  I'm sending five down in
this, thinking it will come in usefully for you.
And Hermie and Miss Browne have gone off
to Wilgandra to get new dresses and cups and
sheets and whips of other things with the rest.
You should have seen their list.  The mater
and Challis'll think we're no end of swells
after all.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Home to the Harbour`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV


.. class:: center medium bold

   Home to the Harbour

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |        'City of ships!
   |  City of the world! (for all races are here,
   |  All the lands of the earth make contributions here;)
   |  Proud and passionate city—mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!
   |  Spring up, O city—not for peace alone, but be indeed yourself, warlike!
   |  War, red war is my song through your streets, O city!'

.. vspace:: 2

Down through the excited waters of the
harbour came the great ship Utopia,
the fussy little tug running on ahead.

Away near the Heads the stretching blue
had danced almost as unfurrowed by the lines
of boats as outside, where the ocean's ways
lay wild.

But as the ship came down, down closer to
the city, a stately untroubled belle on the
arm of her hot, nervous, fidgety little partner,
many of the passengers felt with astonishment
they had never seen so many watercraft in
all their lives before.  Rowing boats—scores
and scores of them!  They looked like flies
on an agitated surface of translucent honey.
Sailing boats!  Surely not one stitch of canvas
owned by the city was out of use.  Poised,
waiting, up and down, everywhere, you felt
there was going to be a storm and these were
the white gulls come in flocks to flutter and
dip and rise till it began.  The ferry-boats!
They went their hurried journeys to and
from—across to North Shore, to Mosman's,
and Neutral Bay, to Manly, and you could
fancy they were looking over their shoulders
all the way and longing to come back.  The
ocean-going boats, leaning at the Woolloomooloo
wharves or anchored out in the stream, they
were black with eager people, and waved from
every point long strings of brilliant
flags—the flags of half the world.  America was
there, shaking out her Stars and Stripes from
a mail steamer, a San Francisco timber-boat
passing along to a berth in Darling Harbour,
and a transport come to take stores for the
army in the Philippines.

From one of the men-of-war in Farm
Cove floated Japan's white flag with its red
chrysanthemum; France had her war-ship,
with its red, white, and blue ensign, also in
the cove.  All the others, half a dozen of
them, floated the white ensign of England.

Up at the quay lay the mammoth Friedrich
der Grosse, Germany's black, red, and white
ensign flying in the wind amid her gay
strings of bunting, and round the corner, in
Darling Harbour, among the boats that had
come down heavily laden from the rivers, the
boats from all the other colonies and Fiji
and Noumea.  Russia and Norway both were
represented.

And the city—had the City of Blue Waves
gone mad?

As the Utopia made her slow progress up
the harbour, those on board were able to
catch a breath of the excitement from the
land.

The wharves at Woolloomooloo seemed a
black mass of humanity; the windows of the
warehouses were lined with faces, men and
small boys had taken up vantage-points on
scaffolding, cranes, the very roofs of the wharf
buildings.  On the green park-like slopes of
the Domain thousands were patiently waiting,
white and gay coloured parasols and dresses
enlivening the sombre garments of the men.

Challis stood at the side of the boat with
trembling knees and rounded eyes.  Mrs. Cameron
was beside her, very pale, struggling
hard for composure, putting her hand to her
throat secretly now and again, to smooth the
lumps that seemed to be rising there.  A warm
reception she had had no doubt her child
would have; indeed, the Melbourne papers she
had seen had said big preparations were to be
made for her reception, for was not this the
city of her birth, the eager, open-handed city
that had made it possible for the world to
judge of her genius?  But the mother's wildest
thoughts had never dreamed of anything like
this; royalty itself had never on any of its
journeyings been welcomed in more magnificent
fashion.

She paled and paled—she slid down her
hand, and caught and held tightly in it one of
the small thin hands of her gifted child.

Yet, great as the honour undoubtedly
seemed, had the power to change things
been hers, she would have swept the wharves
clear of all that strange-faced crowd, and have
had, standing there alone, looking up at her,
the husband her heart was throbbing for, the
children she yearned for, and yet would hardly
know.

The lady who had begged the photograph
pressed her way up.

'What does it all mean?  Did ever you
see such excitement?  Is it really as
Mrs. Graham says—the welcome for Miss Cameron?
I never saw anything to equal it in my
life.  My dear, my dear, you are the most
fortunate girl in the world.  I am proud to
have shaken hands with you, honoured to
have sat at the same table.  See, here is my
travelling ink-pot and a pen, write me your
autograph, darling.'

Mrs. Goodenough bustled up and caught
at the mother's arm.

'Such excitement is enough to kill her;
give her two of these quinine tablets, and keep
these in your pocket, to give if you notice a
sign of flagging.  It will be a most exhausting
day for her.  And you are pale—here, I have
my flask of tonic—you must, you must indeed
take some.  You will never bear up through
all the congratulations, if you do not.  Well,
well, I must say I have never seen anything
like this in my life.'

Challis stood as white as if carved in marble;
sometimes her little soft underlip quivered,
sometimes she gave an almost piteous glance
round, as if seeking an impossible escape.  She
had had warm welcomes and even cheers and
a little bunting in many towns, but what was
this she had fallen upon?

The gangways were hardly down before
there hurried on board from the wharf a
gentleman in a tall hat, and two others with
the ungroomed, long-haired appearance of the
musician the world over.  One of them bore
a moderate-sized bouquet of white flowers, and
another a small harp of roses that looked a
little dashed with the sun and dust.

'Miss Cameron, Miss Cameron!' was the
call echoed all along the deck.  The captain
himself came up and took the little girl and her
mother down to the men.  They were warmly
shaken hands with, their healths and the voyage
asked after, and the flowers presented.  Then
one of the musicians began to read an address
couched in the most flattering terms, but
half-way through the tall-hatted gentleman
tapped his arm and whispered and looked at
his watch.  And the musician nodded and
turned over the leaves of the address, and
shook his head doubtfully and looked hastily
also at his watch.

'My dear Miss Cameron,' he said, and
rolled the big paper up, 'I shall really have to
keep this for a more opportune time.  We
had thought the Utopia would not have been
here until four this afternoon, when all our
arrangements would have gone well.  But now
the mayor and the Euterpe Society, and all
the musical bodies in the town are of course
engaged in seeing the Bush Contingent off.
We expect the procession any minute—indeed,
it must be nearly in Pitt Street by this.'

Mrs. Cameron said a few graceful words, in
which she begged them not to waste time
now; she was assured by all their kind speeches
of the welcome her daughter had in this her
native city, and she expressed her sense of the
good fortune that had awaited them, inasmuch
as the Utopia had arrived in time to see an
event of such national importance as the
departure of the Bush Contingent.  No one
could have guessed at the dear fatuous notion
she had been nursing in that sensible head
of hers until a moment back.

As for Challis—Challis put her head over
her fast-fading harp and laughed, laughed
uncontrollably a minute or two.  Then she
stretched out her hand and touched one of the
musician's sleeves.  'Couldn't we get off and
see the procession?' she said.

The musician looked at her eagerly, admiringly.
'Just what I was going to suggest,' he
cried.  'Come on, come on—we've got a carriage
out here for you, and if we've any luck we'll
just get up into Macquarie Street in time.'

He and his friends swept the two voyagers
off their feet, and carried them with the
pushing throng to the gangway.  None of the
passengers had any time to look at them;
all were a little off balance at the time, rushing
about with faces broken up into tears and
laughter, kissing and throwing arms round
those they had been long parted from, wildly
imploring stewards for gladstones and
handbags from their cabins.

In the crush Challis whispered to her mother,
'Oh, aren't I glad it's not for me!' in a tone
of fervent thankfulness.

When they were down on the wharf, the
rapturous meetings on all sides sent their eyes
hungrily searching the crowd again for their
own home welcomers.  But there seemed no
one, no one, look as they would, and they
went slowly down the company's wharf with
the welcomers the city had sent to the hired
open carriage outside.

Challis and her mother sat facing the horses,
the tall-hatted gentleman and one musician
sat opposite to them, the other went on the
box.  It had been the committee's intention
to bid the coachman wear white favours, in
honour of the visitor's youth.  But the item
had been forgotten, and the man wore instead
three of the Contingent medals boys were
selling in the streets.  The carriage made a
snail's progress along the quay crowded with
the emptyings of the ferry-boats, and slowly,
slowly climbed up to Bridge Street, which was
on the line of march.  The multitude looked
at the vehicle.

'Who's the kid?' shouted a youth.

And a bright young Australian yelled:

'The colonel's kid—going to meet her pa
and say good-bye.'  On which the human sea
lifted up its lungs and hurrahed wildly, till
something new came along to attract its
interest.

So Challis had her cheers.

But in Macquarie Street all traffic was
suspended, and a hoarse, red-faced man in some
sort of a uniform charged at the open carriage,
and ordered it to go back, as if it were no
more important than a broken-springed buggy
with one horse.

'Have to take yer up Castlereagh Street,
ladies,' said the driver regretfully.  'If yer'd
been 'arf an hour sooner, we'd have just got
up to the 'ospital, and yer'd 'ave seen it all
fine.'

'Oh,' said Challis eagerly to the musicians,
'see! see that lovely heap of wood—look—over
there—those women are getting off—there
would be lots of room for us.  Oh, do let's
get out!'

In three minutes the little party was sitting,
clinging, or standing on a pile of timber
outside a half-built house, and the carriage had
backed, backed away to take a clear course up
deserted Castlereagh Street.

The sudden roll of a drum sent its electric
vibration through the tense multitude.  The
cry of, 'Here they come!' raised falsely a
dozen times during the last two hours, now
had the positive ring in it that carried entire
conviction.

'Oh, look, mother!  See here come the
horses!  Doesn't it remind you of the Jubilee
crowd in London?' said Challis.

But Mrs. Cameron pushed roughly at her
shoulder.  'Come here,' she said hoarsely;
'change places with me.  Don't fall—there,
hold fast.  Let me get lower down.'

A man was fighting his way through the
throng—a grey-bearded man in a well-cut
light grey suit and a white helmet; and such
was his determination that five minutes after
Mrs. Cameron had seen him he had worked
his way through twenty yards of solid crowd
and was standing just below her.

Mrs. Cameron turned to the musician who
had been at much pains to secure a little
room for himself on the timber.

'Mr. Jardine,' she said, 'will you please
get down and give up your place to my
husband?  I—I have not seen him for six
years.'

Jardine climbed down cheerfully—but also
of necessity.  Cameron pulled himself into the
vacant place.

They were side by side at last, and neither
could speak; they just looked at each other
with white faces—looked, looked.

Finally their hands went together.

A choked little voice came from above
after a minute or two.

'Me too, daddie—speak to me too.'  And
it was then he remembered his child as well
as his wife was come back to him.

He reached up and squeezed the eager hand,
he put his other hand round her little shoe and
squeezed that too.  Challis leaned down and
kissed the top of his helmet.

'I said you'd have a helmet on,' she said,
with a hysterical little laugh.

His hand went back to his wife's.

'Is there no way of getting out of this
rabble?' she said.

'You might be crushed to death.  There's
nothing for it now, but to sit still till it is
over.'

'Why—why weren't you on the wharf?'

'I was—of course I was—I saw you both
plainly just as they put the gangway down.
But there was an accident: a little child near
me was knocked down by a luggage truck,
badly hurt, at the moment: there seemed no
one else to give the mother a hand.  By the
time I'd got him up and into a cab and found
a fellow willing to go with her to a doctor's,
you had gone.  They told me the carriage had
come up Bridge Street.  I have been fighting
my way and looking for you ever since.'

'The children?' said the mother.

'All well, quite well; I couldn't bring them.'

'No.  Oh, to get out of this hateful crowd!'

'Here they come,' Challis said; 'no, they
are only policemen.'

The fine horses and men of the mounted
police rode by, then a small body of Lancers;
after these marched some two hundred sailors
of the Royal Navy, and perhaps half that
number of Royal Marines.

Then the Bushies.

And now the crowd took the reins off itself,
and gave head to its madness.  It hurrahed
itself hoarse; it waved its arms, and its
handkerchief, and its hat, and its head; it flung
flowers, and flags, and coloured paper; it hung
recklessly from roofs, and walls, doors, chimneys,
fences, lamp-posts, balconies, verandah-posts,
and it yelled, 'There's Jack,' 'Good-bye, Joe,'
'Come back, Wilson,' 'Shoot 'em down, Tom,'
'Hurrah, Cooper!' 'Luck to you, Fogarty,'
'There's Storey,' 'Hurrah, Watt!'  It handed
up drinks to the thirsty horsemen, it pressed
handkerchiefs, cigars, and sweets indiscriminately
upon them.

In return the sunburnt Bushies waved their
helmets and little toy flags; one held up a
small fox-terrier, another an opossum by the
tail; they rode along with one arm free for
handshaking all along the route, threw kisses
to the excited women, even at times leaned
down and kissed some tip-toe eager girl in
a white dress and a wonderful hat.

They looked as military as one could wish
now; Cameron was amazed to think this was
the same material he had seen drilling.  A
finer body of men had never passed down the
streets of any city.  They sat their magnificent
horses magnificently; you knew there was
nothing they could not do with the splendid
beasts.  The khaki uniform and khaki helmet,
and the sunburnt ruddy faces made a healthful,
workmanlike study in brown.

'That's the dog Bushie,' said Cameron to
Challis.  'Every one in the colony is interested
in him; the men say he will be very useful.'

The crowd yelled, 'Bushie, Bushie—hurrah! good
old doggie,' as the intelligent sheep-dog
came into sight.

'Here's Stevenson—see, the man on the left,
Molly,' Cameron said; 'our best friend.  Good-bye,
Mortimer, good luck!  Good-bye, old
fellow, good-bye.'

Mortimer waved his helmet gaily.

'What a fine fellow!' said Mrs. Cameron,
and what a good face!  Who is the old man?'

'Why, it's old Stevenson.  Yes, just like him
to do that,' Cameron answered.  The old
squatter had ridden alongside the Bushmen the
whole of the line of march.  His face was
working with excitement; every time a cheer went
up from the crowd he cheered too, standing
up from time to time in his saddle and waving
his soft felt hat.  He kept beside his son as
much as he could; he was almost bursting
with the pride of his position.

Challis's eyes were full of tears.

'Oh,' she said, 'what a very dreadful thing
if that nice man should be killed!'  She was
quite captivated by the sunny smile Mortimer
had given their group.

'There's not a better fellow in the world,'
Cameron said warmly.

The khaki died away in the distance, the
prancing horses were gone, the sound of the
band grew fainter and fainter.

Yet a little time, and the transports would
be plunging through the Heads with them,
carrying them forward as fast as might be to
dye the veldt red with their own blood or
that of the Boers.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Heart to Heart`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XV


.. class:: center medium bold

   Heart to Heart

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  'We will not speak of years to-night;
   |    For what have years to bring,
   |  But larger floods of love and light,
   |    And sweeter songs to sing?'

.. vspace:: 2

They were in a quiet room at the hotel
at last.  They had lost sight of the
tall-hatted gentleman and one musician
entirely; the other had said thoughtfully that
he would not intrude.

'This is not the way we meant to welcome
your daughter, Mrs. Cameron,' he said,
laughing, as he clung by one hand to the timber,
'but, as you see, we're all mad together to-day.
By to-morrow we shall have calmed down
a little, and there will be a deputation and
everything in order.  You'll be at the
Australia, of course?'

'Yes, I have rooms waiting for them,'
Cameron said quietly.

So the pleasant, long-haired fellow drifted
away, and Cameron, at the first chance, steered
his little family out of the thinning crowd, and
found a cab to take them to the peace of the
hotel.

They took their hats off.  Waiters seemed
to think eating was a necessity, and brought
in a meal, and stood, two of them, to help
serve.

Mrs. Cameron turned her head.

'We would rather wait on ourselves,' she
said.  'We have everything that we shall
need, thank you, so you may go.'

Cameron drew a relieved breath, though he
would as soon have thought of dismissing the
men himself as of calmly ordering one of those
magnificent colonels out of his way during the
afternoon.

'Now we can be cosy,' Challis said, and sat
down on her father's knee, instead of using
the chair the waiter had placed for her.
'Are we like what you thought?' she asked.
'Someway I can't think now how I could have
fancied you would be any different.  Oh, I'm
sure you're just like what I thought, only——'  She
paused then, and a little sensitive flush ran
up into her cheeks.  She had almost said,
'Only your beard is grey.'

But her eyes had gone to its greyness.

'Yes,' he said a little sadly, 'I didn't wait
for you, Molly, did I?  We always said we
would grow old together, but I have left you
far behind.'

He hardly knew his wife.  Time seemed to
have turned back for her.  There was not a
wrinkle on her skin, the sharp winters had
given a bloom like girlhood's to her cheeks,
and the varied life and rest from domestic
worries had brought the spring back into
her blood.

The wife who had gone away had been
shrinking, careworn; she had worn shabby
bonnets of her own trimming, dresses she had
turned and turned about again.  This one
had the quiet, assured manner of a woman
accustomed to travel.  She wore a tailor-made
fawn coat and skirt, whose very severity
accentuated their style.  There was the hall-mark of
Paris on her bonnet of violets.

Cameron sent a fleeting thought of gratitude
to Mortimer, who had made it possible for
his own clothes not to blush beside such
garments.  They were a quiet little party,
and Challis did most of the talking.  Cameron
looked at his wife when she was occupied with
the tea-cups; her searching eyes fastened on
him when he turned to speak to his little
daughter.

Once, when he passed a plate to Challis,
she noticed his hands against the snow of the
tablecloth—hands she did not know at all, so
rough and weather-marked and deeply brown
they were.  But she asked no question;
instinctively she felt there was something to be
told to her, and she hung back from the
knowledge, knowing the telling would be pain
to him.

'Oh dear,' said Challis, 'if only you had
brought Bart down, too, daddie, and he was
sitting just here on this chair next to me!'

'I thought it was Hermie you wanted most,'
the mother said.

'Ah, Hermie!  I want Hermie to sleep
with.  No, not to sleep with, for we sha'n't
shut our eyes at all, but just to lie in the
dark and talk and talk.'

'Roly wanted to come,' Cameron said.  'He's
war mad, of course.  He's painted the name
Transvaal Vale on the sliprails.'

'On the what?' said Mrs. Cameron.

Cameron went darkly red.

'The—gate,' he said.

'What else does he do?  I want to know
about Roly,' Challis said eagerly.

'He wears a football jersey most of the
time,' said the father, 'and is to be met at
any hour of the day hung all over with the
table-knives and the tin-opener and the cork-screw
and the sharpening-steel.  Also, he carries
round his neck a string of what I think he
calls double bungers.  These are his
cartridges.  And he came possessed of an old
tent in some way—the railway navvies gave
it to him, I believe—and he has pitched it
just outside the back door, and sleeps in it
all night.'

'Oh dear, oh dear!  The night air; he
will catch a dreadful chill!' cried the mother,
used now to English nights.

'Not he!  He's a hardy little chap,' said
Cameron.

'More, more,' said Challis.  'He's great
fun, I think.  Tell some more about him,
daddie.'

'A neighbour, young Stevenson—you
remember the Stevensons of Coolooli, Molly?—gave
him half a crown the other day, and of
course he went off to Wilgandra and laid in
a stock of crackers.  He made a rather
ingenious fortification that he called Spion Kop,
and invited us all out to see it.  You don't
know Darkie, the cattle dog, of course—we've
only had him four years; Darkie naturally
came too.  He's rather a curiosity in his way,
old Darkie; seems to have a natural love for
fire, and goes off his head with excitement
whenever a cracker is let off or the boys
make a bonfire.  Well, he made enough noise
barking and yelping over Roly's display to
satisfy even that young man.  Presently Roly
Put a whole packet of his double bungers on
the top of his fort, and—what he did not tell
me till afterwards—a quantity of blasting powder
he had purloined from the navvies.  Then he
put a lighted match near a long piece of
string, and cut down to us as hard as he could.
Just at the critical moment, when we were
getting our ears ready for the big explosion,
Darkie gave a frantic bark of delight, bounded
to the fort and seized the whole packet in
his mouth.  There wasn't time even to shout
at him; there came a tremendous explosion,
and the air seemed full of stones and earth
and Darkie.  The old fellow must have
been blown six feet up in the air.  I think
we all shut our eyes, not liking the thought
of seeing the poor old dog descend in a
thousand pieces.  But when we opened them
he was down on the ground barking and
yelping with more furious delight than ever,
and except for a badly singed coat and
a burnt tongue, not a bit the worse for his
elevation.'

Mrs. Cameron was looking disturbed.

'He seems to do very dangerous things,'
she said.

Cameron laughed.

'That's what Miss Browne says,' he
answered; 'but he always turns up safe and
sound.'

'Miss Browne?' repeated Mrs. Cameron.

Cameron's eyes dropped to his plate, and
he drank deeply at his tea, to put off the
moment of his answer.

'Who is Miss Browne?' his wife asked again.

Cameron moved his eyes to a button on
her coat.

'I was obliged to change lady-helps,' he said.

Mrs. Cameron's face expressed absolute alarm.

'Miss Macintosh—is not Miss Macintosh
still with you?  You did not tell me.  Why
did she go?  How long has she been gone?'

Cameron looked white.  'Some—little time,'
he said; 'she—went to be married.'

'And is this other—is Miss Browne
as good?  Oh, it would almost be
impossible.  Have you had to change much?'

Cameron reassured her on that point.  Miss
Browne had been with them ever since Miss
Macintosh left.

'But how long is that?  You don't tell
me,' she cried.

Cameron looked at a lower button.

'Some—time,' he repeated faintly.

'Jim,' she cried, and almost sharply, 'have
you been keeping things from me?  How long
has Miss Macintosh been gone?'

He lifted his eyes and looked at her.  The
day of reckoning had come.

'She left six months after you went,' he
answered.

The news held Mrs. Cameron speechless for
three minutes.

'This other person—Miss Browne—is she
as good?' she asked at length.

Cameron breathed hard, and cut a slice of
bread.

'She does her best,' he said, 'but she is
not—very capable.'

'Jim,' said Mrs. Cameron, 'is there
anything else?  Have you lost your
position?'

He bent his head a little.  He merely
nodded, and she might have thought it a
careless nod, only her eyes suddenly saw the
trembling of his work-marked hands.

'Challis,' she said, 'go away—leave us alone.'

The child put down her spoon and fork,
and vanished.

Cameron stood up, looking fixedly at the
carpet, waiting with bowed head for her
questions.

.. _`'HAVE YOU HIDDEN ANYTHING ELSE?' SAID MRS. CAMERON.`:

.. figure:: images/img-216.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: 'HAVE YOU HIDDEN ANYTHING ELSE?' SAID MRS. CAMERON.

   'HAVE YOU HIDDEN ANYTHING ELSE?' SAID MRS. CAMERON.

'Have you hidden anything else?' she said,
'Are any of the children dead?'

'None of them are dead,' he said.

'Are any of them deformed or hurt in any way?'

'None of them are hurt—they are in good
health,' he said.

'Have you ceased to love me?'—her voice
was losing the note of fear that made it hard
and unnatural.

He looked at her, and his eyes swam.

Her arms were round him, she was kissing
him, kissing his wet eyes, his trembling lips,
stroking his cheeks, crying over him.

'You are afraid to tell me—me, your own
little wife—something that does not matter
at all.  What can anything matter?  We are
all alive, and we love each other as we have
done always.  Darling, darling, don't look
like that!  Put down your head here, here on
my breast—my husband, my darling!  This
is Molly, who went all through the ups and
downs with you; you never used to be afraid
to tell her anything.'

He tried to speak, but sobs shook him
instead.

'Hush!' she said.  'There, don't talk,
don't try to tell me.  I know, darling.  You
lost the position, and you couldn't get
another, and you're all as poor as poor
can be.  Pooh! what does that matter?
You have none of you starved, since
you are all alive, and the end has come.
Poor hands, poor hands,'—her kisses and
tears covered them,—'have they been
breaking stones that the children might have
bread?'

'Molly,' he said, anguished, 'your worst
thought cannot picture what I have brought
them to.'

She trembled a little—Hermie, little Floss,
the boys!

But she laughed.

'They are alive—they are together, and not
in the Benevolent Asylum.  My darling, I
don't mind in the very least.'

'Molly,' he cried, 'you cannot dream how
bad it is!  It is Dunks' selection; we have
been there four years!'

She trembled again, for she had seen Dunks'
selection, and the memory of it was yet in
her mind.

But again she laughed.

'It will have made them all hardy,' she
said; 'I can see it has done so, or Roly
wouldn't be sleeping out of doors.'

'My wife,' he said, 'my wife, my wife!'

They clung together.

'The past is gone,' she whispered.  'I will
never leave you again.'

'My wife, my wife!'

'Together now till death; nothing else
shall part us, nothing else.'

'My wife!'

Her tears rained down, mingled with his,
and fell away into the greyness of his
beard.

They clung together, and the room and the
world faded.  They clung together, and there
was no one in all space but themselves and
God—God who had given them into each
other's arm once more.

Challis came to the door—she had knocked
twice, to tell them that the luggage had come
from the ship—then she turned the handle,
for she thought they had gone out.

But those faces!  Those faces of the
father and mother, wet, uplifted, almost
divine!

Very softly she closed the door again, and
stole away.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`The Rosery`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVI


.. class:: center medium bold

   The Rosery

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  They cling in the moonlight, they kiss each other.
   |  "Child, my child!" and "Mother, mother!"'

.. vspace:: 2

Bart was on Wilgandra Station to meet
them—Bart, healthy-looking and sinewy,
if thin; he wore white flannel trousers, a white
linen coat, and a new straw hat with a new
fly-veil attached.  Mrs. Cameron had looked
when her husband cried, 'There's Bart,' with
eyes that expected to see an out-at-elbow lad,
possibly barefoot, probably ill-developed.  But
there was nothing she would have changed.

'Of course they all wanted to come to meet
you,' the boy said, when the first glad greetings
were over, and the great panting, shrieking
train had become just a quiet black thread
climbing the side of the next rise.  'But I
didn't want to crowd the buggy.'

'The buggy!' his father said.  'I was just
going into the hotel to get one.  I'm glad
you thought to order it.'

'It's Mr. Stevenson's,' Bart said.  'He sent
it down this morning for me to meet you in,'
and he led them with much satisfaction to the
handsome roomy sociable he had in waiting.
Their own solitary equipage, the shabby cart
drawn by Tramby and driven by young Daly,
was in readiness for the many boxes.

Once, in carrying the luggage to the cart,
Bart and his father found themselves alone
on the station for a moment.  Bart gave a
laughing glance from his father's to his own
apparel.

'Isn't it a lark?' he said.  'I feel quite
shy of myself, don't you?'

'Do the girls look nice?' Cameron said
anxiously.

'Spiffin,' said Bart, 'and Miss Browne's
got a new dress, and even curled her hair.
I say, have you told mother about Miss
Browne?'

'Yes, she is quite prepared.'

'And she knows about the selection?'

'She knows about the selection.'

'We've—we've been tidying up a bit, dad.
I think you'll find it's a bit—er—tidier.'  There
was a flush on the boy's cheek, a look
of suppressed excitement in his eyes.  'Let's
get on now; the horse doesn't like to stand,
and everything's in.'

They drove up the road that wound out of
civilised Wilgandra away to parts where the
bush took on its wild character again, and
rolled either side of them in unbroken severity
and loneliness for miles.

But it was early winter now, and the
thankful land lay smiling and happy-eyed
beneath a cooler sky.  Even the newest
clearings flaunted rich carpets of grass, green as
grass only springs where a bush fire has purged
the ground for it.  The air was fragrant with
the bush scents that rise after rain.  A cool,
quiet breeze swayed the boughs of the ocean-waste
of trees, here and there it lifted the long
string of warm-coloured bark—autumn's royal
rags—that hung from the silvered trunks.

Cameron was driving, and mechanically
turned the horse's head at the place where he
had always turned for the sliprails of his
selection.

And there were no sliprails!

He turned an astonished glance at Bart, but
the boy's eyes only danced.

'I'll get down and open the gate,' he said
demurely, and jumped down while his father
stared at the neat white gate with The
Rosery painted on in black letters.  Could
this be Dunks' selection that stretched before
the head of the horse that bore them slowly
along?  This the grey, dreary place that had
cast its colour over the souls of those who
looked at it.  A drive ran up from the gate
to the house, not a smooth, red gravelled
drive by any means, but it was cleared and
stumped now all its length and width, and
went with pleasant windings between the trees.

A low white two-rail fence divided the bush
and sheep ground from the land about the
house; the small orchard showed freshly
ploughed up and trenched between the trees;
a vegetable garden was laid out, and the peas
and beans were above the ground already.
The flower-beds near the house were dug and
weeded, as if they had been beds in the
Botanical Gardens; and dahlias, little
sunflowers, and cosmea of all shades made a gay
mass of colour.  The pixies' hands had even
attacked the cottage; Cameron himself had
given it a coat of red paint that had much
altered its forlorn aspect; these new hands had
carried the coat of paint even over the dreary
galvanised iron roof, had 'picked out' the
chimneys, and windows, and verandah-posts
with white, added a seven-foot verandah all
round, and knocked a French window into the
walls here and there.

'Why,' cried Challis, 'it's the sweetest,
darlingest little place I ever saw!  Oh, I never
want to go away from it again!'

Mrs. Cameron was looking with eyes full
of pleased surprise.

'Why, Jim,' she said, 'why, dearest, it is
really very nice, very nice indeed, so
peaceful-looking.  You did not prepare me for
anything like this.'

Cameron swallowed a lump in his throat.

'I didn't prepare myself,' he began; but his
wife's hand was fluttering to the fastening of
the sociable door, and her ears were no longer
for him, for Hermie and Roly were running
out to meet her.

Such a rushing into arms, such kissings,
such a choking of laughter and tears!
Mrs. Cameron held Hermie to her and from her,
and to her again, and marvelled to find her
almost a woman.

'My pretty girl, my pretty girl!' she
said, the fond tears starting, and Hermie
blushed herself into even lovelier colour than
before.

Challis kissed her sister and clung to her a
moment, then stood away shy and pink,
almost crying.  Hermie's hair was done 'on
top,' her dress was long, so long; she was
very pretty and sweet-looking; but oh, there
would never be any whispering and whispering
in bed—she was far too grown up for that.

Roly came up to the sister and submitted
the edge of his left ear to her kiss.  He looked
at her critically.

'Did the Queen cry when you came away?'
he said.

'I didn't notice,' said Challis.  'She was in
the garden when I went to say good-bye, and
she waved her handkerchief when I got back
to the house—perhaps she had been crying
into it.'

'Floss, Floss!  I want my baby,' the mother's
voice was saying.

Hermie looked about her distressed.

'Will you take no notice just yet, darling?'
she said.  'She is very—shy, but she won't
be able to stay away long; she's hiding somewhere.'

'Well, look here,' Roly said, 'I suppose
she'll be wanting to come out here and see
you——'

'Who?' said Challis, who also was looking
longingly for the little girl she was going to
put to bed at night.

'That Queen-woman, of course,' said Roly.
'Look here, you can tell her straight before
she comes I'm not going to take my tent down
for her.  You can let her have Miss Browne's
bedroom, and you can't see it from that window.
Miss Browne's got a cheek.  Wanted me to
take it down just for you and mother, cos she
says it's untidy.'

'Why, we're dying to see the tent, aren't
we, mother?' Challis said.

Mrs. Cameron's arm went round her boy's
shoulder, and her lips down to his round,
closely cropped head.  He dodged skilfully.

'Come and see the tent,' he said.  Then a
gush of gentler feeling came up in his little
boy-heart, and he moved up to her again and
rubbed his head on her arm.  'If you like,' he
said, 'I'll let you sleep out in it to-night, but
not her,' and he pointed a finger at Challis;
'she'd get messing about and trying to tidy up.'

He dragged them round to the back of the
cottage, where the tent stood, a most dilapidated
spread of ragged canvas.

'Look here,' the owner said, nearly bursting
with pride, 'up there, that's the fly, keeps it
cool.  I can sit in it on the hottest day.'

'No one else could,' laughed Bart.

Roly took no heed of the depreciation.

'See that?  That's my water-bag; hang it
in a draught, and it's as cool as you like.'

'No,' said Bart again, 'only as *you* like.'

'See this?  Keep my meat in it, flies can't
get in, hang it up out of the way.  Here's my
gridiron—here's my frying-pan.'

'Why,' cried Hermie, 'Miss Browne's been
looking for the frying-pan all the morning!'

'Let her cook her things in the oven,' said
Roly.  'See this?  It's my bunk, made it
myself—just legs of trees, and you stretch
canvas on it.  No sheets for me, only this blue
blanket——'

The blanket moved convulsively, a little
brown bare foot was sticking out of one end
of it, a strand of straight light hair showed
at the other.

'Flossie!' the mother cried, and made a
rush at the bunk.

The small girl sat up.

'Go away!' she said.  'Go away!  I won't
be kissed.  I'm not your girl.  Keep your
old dolls for yourself.'

'Flossie,' cried the mother, 'Flossie!' and
tried to gather her up as if she had been
two instead of seven, and tried to kiss her; but
Floss covered her face tightly with her bony
little hands.

'Floss,' said Cameron, 'don't be ridiculous.
Kiss your mother, and why are you not
dressed?'

Hermie was looking ready to cry.  Had she
not herself put the child a clean white frock on,
and tried to curl her hair and seen her into
shoes and stockings?  And here was the
naughty little thing barefoot, and in a ragged
print frock!

'Kiss your mother,' Cameron said sternly,
the surprised pain on his wife's face angering
him against the child.

Floss turned a sullen little face to her
mother, but her lips did not move.

'Now kiss Challis,' the father said; for the
mother, stooping over the child, had hidden
it from him that he had only been half obeyed.
Challis came forward to put a loving arm round
the ragged shoulder.  But Floss struggled to
the ground, dived under the bunk, dragged
at one of the tent-pegs, and was out and
flying off to the bush like a wild rabbit before
any one could stop her.

'Go and fetch her back, Bart,' Cameron
said, extreme annoyance in his tone.

'It was to be expected,' Mrs. Cameron
said, but she looked a little white.  'We
mustn't force her; you must let me lay siege
to the fortress my own way.'

They went into the cottage, and Miss
Browne showed herself—Miss Browne, with
her usual strands of hair in little tight curls
round her forehead, and a ready-made blouse
and skirt of white pique vainly endeavouring
to accommodate itself to her figure.

'Oh dear!' she said, 'most ashamed, most
grieved, Floss, peculiar disposition, soon come
round, hope a pleasant journey, hot, dusty,
must be hungry, Roly, ashamed, grieved, most
untidy tent, unwilling to take it down, like
to wash and take hats off, bedroom, show
the way, dinner, hoped they would like it,
not what they were accustomed to, holes in
curtains, had not had time to mend them,
must excuse table, afraid not a good manager,
ignorant many things.'

'Everything is very nice,' Mrs. Cameron
said.  'I am quite sure you have always
done your best.  Mr. Cameron has told
me how hard you have worked, and you
must let me thank you for it.  There, there,
I am afraid you have overtired yourself
preparing for us.  Don't trouble any more,
we are going to shake down into place at
once, Challis and I, and forget we have ever
been away.'

'Oh, my love,' said Miss Browne, 'my
dear, oh, my love!' and went away into the
kitchen, and wept happily all the time she
helped Lizzie to dish up the dinner.

'Be quick,' said Roly, as the travellers went
to a bedroom to take off their hats, 'there's
fowls for dinner.  It's Bluey, and Speckle,
and Whitey.  Whitey'll be the fattest, he
was mine.'

'Oh dear,' said Hermie, as she shut the
bedroom door, 'I wish he hadn't said that.
Now father won't eat any.  He never eats
meat at all, but he likes poultry unless any one
says anything like that.  He says he likes to
think of dinner just as dinner, and hates to
remember the things have once been walking
about.  Now it won't be roast fowl at all
to him, but just Whitey.'

'I don't think he heard,' said Challis; 'he
was looking at the roses on the dinner-table,
and saying, "I hope they didn't break my
Souvenir de Terese Levet when they plucked
these."'

Hermie laughed.

'Dear old dad!' she said.  'Mother, I
don't know how he could have done so
long without you if it had not been for his
roses.'

'I must go down and see them,' the mother
said, and tossed her bonnet off hastily.  'See,
he is already going out to them.  Is there
time before dinner, darling?  Plainly he can't
wait any longer.'

She went through the long window on to
the verandah, and caught him up.

Challis was taking off her hat, brushing her
hair, removing the signs of travel with a
dainty deftness born of so frequent journeys.
Hermie's eyes followed her everywhere.  They
saw a girl not tall for her fourteen years,
slender, not over strong-looking.  Soft light
hair fell away down her back, curlless, waveless.
The greyish, hazel eyes were full of quiet
shining, the face was thin, yet soft and childish,
the mouth sensitive, a little sad.

'Oh,' she said, 'the smell of the soap,
Hermie!  I can see the other bedroom so
well—the Wilgandra one, and your bed was near
the fireplace, and mine had white tassels on,
and there was a pink vase on the washstand
for our tooth-brushes.'

Hermie looked in slight bewilderment at
the pieces of common household soap that her
sister held; she did not realise that the girl
had seen and smelt nothing but scented since
she went away, and that this plain yellow piece
was pungent with the old days.

'Where am I going to sleep, Hermie?' said
the little girl, and her heart throbbed with the
hope that Hermie would cry, 'With me, of course.'

'Bart is going to sleep out in the tent with
Roly,' Hermie said, hanging up the well-cut
little travelling-coat with a sigh for its style.
'You'll have his room.'

'Where do you sleep?' Challis ventured.

'Dad and Bart built me a little room across
there,' said Hermie.

'And Floss?'

'Her cot is in Miss Browne's room.'

Challis was glad bed-time was still some
hours off; she had never yet slept in a
room all to herself, but did not like to tell
Hermie so.

Roly banged at the door.  'There you
go,' he said, 'grabbing everything, Hermie.
She wants to come out and finish looking at
the tent.'

'Finish looking at your grandmother!'
laughed Hermie, then blushed vexedly.  That
was such a favourite phrase of Bart's she
unconsciously fell into it herself; but what would
Challis think of such slang, Challis, who was
used to the conversation of cultured, travelled
people?  Challis, who looked such a little lady
in her well-cut English-looking clothes, and
spoke with the clipped, clear pronunciation her
mother had insisted upon all these years?

Challis, of course, would think her a boor,
an uneducated, unrefined Australian back-blocks
girl.  Well, whose fault was it if she was?'  She
turned to her sister coldly.  'If you have
finished we may as well go.'

Challis followed her meekly.

'Flossie,' said the mother, going into a
bedroom when it was eight o'clock at night, and
the rebel had come in and put herself to bed,
'I've just been unpacking my box and found
this for Hermie.  Do you think it is pretty?'

She held up the daintiest of hats.

Flossie looked at it, then squeezed her eyes
up tight.

'Don't want to see it,' she said.

'We are unpacking the boxes,' the mother
said; 'I thought you might like to put your
dressing-gown on and come and watch.'

'Don't want to watch,' said Floss; 'haven't
got any dressing-gown.'

Mrs. Cameron was standing in the bedroom
doorway.  She held out a box of fascinating
doll's tea-things.

'Those are rather pretty, aren't they?' she
said.  'We almost decided on a blue set, but
then these little pink flowers seemed so
fresh-looking we took it.'

Flossie sent a devouring gaze to the beautiful
boxful through the bars of her cot.  Then she
squeezed her eyes up tightly again.

'Wouldn't look at them,' she said.

The mother went away, and the darkness
deepened in the room, and Floss lay gazing
with hard eyes at a patch of light thrown from
the living-room lamp upon the ceiling.

Her heart swelled more and more; she
pictured miserable scenes in which, while the
rest of the family flaunted about in silk, she,
Floss, was attired in rags and had crusts only
to eat.

'Only,' she muttered to herself, 'I won't
eat them, and then I'll die, and p'r'aps she'll
be sorry.'

There was a movement in the room.

'I think I'll lie down quietly on your bed
for an hour, Miss Browne,' the mother's voice
was saying; 'it will do my head good.  Yes,
thank you, I have the bottle of lavender water
here; I never travel without getting a bad
head.'

Miss Browne shook up the pillows and left
her; this idea of making capital out of the
headache was her own.  'Flossie never can
bear any one to suffer,' she said.  'I always
remember when I first came here, and she
was only about three, some one cut a snake in
half along the road.  And what must the child
do but rush from us and pick up one half—by
the mercy of God, the tail half!  You
remember, Hermie?  Bart, my love, you can't
have forgotten that shocking day?  She came
running back to us crying dreadfully, and with
that horrible thing in her hands.  "Mend it,
mend it!" she sobbed "oh, poor sing, poor
sing, mend it twick!"'

So Mrs. Cameron went to lie on the bed
far from Floss, and to sigh occasionally,
once or twice to moan, as indeed she
could, for her headache was severe.

At the sighs there were restless movements
in the cot; at the first moan the little figure
climbed over the rail.

'I don't mind bathing your head,' she said,
her voice a little unsteady.  'Is it hurting you
much?'

'Yes,' sighed the mother, 'it is very bad.'

Floss dipped her handkerchief in the
water-jug, and kept laying it softly on the aching
forehead.  For ten minutes Mrs. Cameron
allowed herself to be thus ministered to, and
presently the child sat down on the bed, almost
within the arm that yearned to circle her.
'Would you like me to fan it?' she whispered.
'Fanning is good.'

'I would rather you laid your little hand
on it,' said the mother.

The little hand lay there instantly.

'I think a kiss on it would do it more good
than anything else,' whispered the mother, 'just
a little one, sweetheart, sweetheart.'

'I couldn't,' quavered Floss.  'I promised
faithfly and somenley.'

'Promised who?'

'Me.'

'What do you mean?'

'When you say, "See my finger wet, see
it dry, cut my throat suresever I die," you've
got to keep to it.'

'And you promised yourself like that that
you wouldn't kiss me—me—mamma, who has
been away for years and years breaking her
heart for her little baby.'

'Oh,' gasped Floss, the fortress nearly down,
'but we might have got dropsy, truly, dropsy
and deafness, me and Roly; May Daly's
mother says so; you gen'ally get them after
measles.'

'But you didn't, you didn't, Tiny.  I prayed
and prayed over the seas to God to take care
of you all for me, and I knew He would.
See how well and strong you all are!  But
ah, I never thought Tiny would break my
heart like this.'

Her voice quivered—fell away; Floss, putting
up an uncertain hand through the darkness,
found the cheek above her quite wet.

'Mother!' she cried, and was face
downward in a minute sobbing relievedly on her
mother's breast.

When they had lain together happy and
quiet for a little time, the mother stirred to
go, for Miss Browne must come to bed.

Floss gave her a final hug.  'I do love you,'
she said.

'My baby,' murmured the mother.  Floss
shook back her straight hair and climbed off
the bed and got into her own.

'But I'm not going to let that Challis off,'
she said.  'I'll just have to take it out of her.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Crossing the Veldt`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVII


.. class:: center medium bold

   Crossing the Veldt

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  'Why criest them for thy hurt?  Thy pain is incurable.'
   |  'Truly this is my grief, and I must bear it.'
   |  'Thus saith the Lord, Such as are for death, to death
   |      and such as are for the sword, to the sword.'
   |                                            *Jeremiah*.

.. vspace:: 2

His good horse under him, a
thunder-clouded sky above, a strange country
astretch on every side, Mortimer was off,
despatches in his pocket from his own colonel
to the colonel of an Imperial regiment stationed
some hundred and thirty miles away.

The day hung heavy from the sky, the land
lay sad hearted and patient-eyed beneath it.

Yet now for the first time in all the weeks
he had been on African soil Mortimer felt at
home with his surroundings, even happy in
them.  The tumultuous days that lay behind
him—he felt that some other, not he, had been
living them.  The frantic excitement of the
send-off, the days at sea, the storm or two,
the troubles with the horses, the uneventful
landing on the unfamiliar shores, the hurried
packing off up country by train, the feverish
days and nights in camp at the bewildered
little village that saw the armies of the greatest
nation on earth swarming about its quiet fields,
his first patrol and the fierce whizz and rattle
of marvellously harmless bullets from a deserted-looking
kopje, his first battle, with its horrid
nightmare of flashing lights and thundering
guns, its pools of blood, its contorted human
faces, its agonised horses writhing in the
dust—these were all nothing to him now, but the
coloured bits of glass one shakes about in
a kaleidoscope.

The smell of tents and of spent gunpowder
was no longer in his nostrils; the brown earth
alone sent up its homely odour, and he drew
the breath of it in with thankfulness.  Such
a quiet country; silent little farms asleep in
the afternoon's sunshine, their crops long since
ready, but gathered only by the birds.  The
cottages, some of them empty of all signs of
habitation, some of them with their doors
carefully locked on all a woman's treasure of
furniture and homely things.

Here and there the sheep had not been
driven off, but cropped placidly at the plentiful
pasturage.  Mortimer's heart went out to the
brown soft things.

On and on he rode, finding his way with
a bushman's instinct for the right path.

The sky grew grey and more grey.

Up from the west rolled a great woollen
cloud that drooped lower and lower till it
burst with a sudden fury over the land, as if
shrapnel shells charged with hail had exploded
in mid-air.  Mortimer put up his collar, and
ducked his head to the heavy ice-drops that
struck him on every side.  He looked in vain
for shelter; the veldt rolled smooth and gently
undulating in all directions, and no tree was
anywhere.  To the left a kopje loomed in the
darkness ahead, to the right he had seen when
on the last rise the white gleaming palings and
lights of a farm.  He pulled his watch out,
and just made out in the rapidly falling
darkness that it was eight o'clock.  His colonel
had advised him to camp for the night
somewhere, lest he should lose his way in the
darkness, and start off again at earliest dawn.
He rapidly resolved to make the farm his
halting-place, should, as was most likely, it
prove to be unoccupied.  The rumour that
two lines of defence would join across this part
of the country had swiftly cleared the sparsely
occupied place.  The thought of camping
among the rocks of the kopje he did not
entertain, having by this the same firmly rooted
distrust of that kind of geological formation
that the British soldier will carry henceforth
in all ages.  He forced his plunging horse
along; the terrified beast was trembling in
every limb with fright at the blinding lightning.

The sound of voices on the road made him
push forward harder than ever, his hand going
swiftly to the pocket that held his revolver;
then he found it was women's voices he
heard, a woman's cry of anguish came after
him.  He wheeled his horse round, and went
back slowly, almost feeling his way in the
darkness.

A flash of lightning showed him a cart with
a fallen horse, an old man, and three girls.

'What's wrong?' he asked.

The old man began to explain rapidly in
Dutch, but a girl who was stooping over the
horse rose up and came to him.

'Our horse has been struck,' she said in
perfectly good English; 'one wheel was struck
too, and blazed for a minute, but the rain has
put it out.'

'Are none of you hurt?' said Mortimer.

'None; it is wonderful!' said the girl.

'Then run along all of you as hard as you
can,' said Mortimer.  'There's a farm and
shelter I think quite close.  I'll take the old
man up on my horse.'

'We can't leave the cart,' said the girl.

'Oh, confound the cart!' said Mortimer,
struggling with his plunging horse.  'You
can get it after the storm is over.'

'We have some one in it,' said the
unemotionable voice of the girl.  'He is dead.'

Again the anguished cry of one of the other
girls rose through the rain.

Mortimer rode round the cart twice before
he could think what to do.

'Whose farm is it?  Is any one living on
it?' he said.

'It is ours,' said the girl; 'we were almost
home.'

'Who is at the farm—how many?'
Mortimer said, having no inclination to run
the risk of being made a prisoner before his
despatches were safe.

'My mother, we girls, our grandfather here,
and some children.'

'I think I had better put up my horse in
the shafts,' said Mortimer, 'though I much
doubt if he'll go.'

'It is no use, the wheel is broken,' said the
girl.  'We were just going to carry him home,
only they will not do anything but cry.  Anna,
Emma, for shame!  What use are tears?
Come, we are strong; let us carry him out of
this rain.'  The girls still moaned and wept,
however, and she spoke sharply again to them,
this time in Dutch, the language in which their
lamentations had been.

'See here,' said Mortimer, 'I will take him
up on my saddle.'  He dismounted and went
to the cart and felt about nervously.  The
English-speaking girl lifted up a rug, and there
on pillows on the cart lay a dead young Boer.

'Are you sure he's dead?' Mortimer said.
The hands, though wet with rain, were hardly
stiff, the body had some faint warmth.

The girl was helping him to lift.

'He is quite dead,' she said.  'He was
wounded and going down by train to a
Hospital.  But as he passed this place, his
home, he made them put him out on the
station, and send for us to take him home.
We brought the cart and pillows, but he had
died in the waiting-shed before we got there.
We are taking him home to bury.'  The
other girls shrilled loudly again.  'Anna,
Emma,' she said, with more sharp words in
Dutch.  Then, excusingly, to Stevenson, and
with pity in her voice, 'He was to have
married one of them, the other is his sister.'

Mortimer got the dead man up before him,
held him with one arm and rode slowly, the
girls and the old man hurrying by his side.
The farm lay about a quarter of a mile
away.  The English-speaking girl opened the
gate.

'There is a ditch all the way up; don't
stumble in it,' she said.  'I must go on and
warn his mother.'  She ran forward in the
darkness.  A turn in the path, and the
lamplight from the farmhouse sent out its rays
into the night.  Some children, small boys
chiefly, clustered at the door; in front of
them stood the girl and another woman, fifty
or sixty years old.

Mortimer with their aid lifted his burden
down, and laid it on a bed in an inner room.
He gave a fearful glance at the elder woman,
the man's mother.  She was a big woman,
not fat, like the Boer women generally are,
but of angular outline, and with sharp high
cheek-bones, and brown piercing eyes.

She was of English parentage, married in
early girlhood to a Boer farmer, and become
mother of one daughter and six sons.  Her
husband had fallen with the handful at
Jameson's Raid; two sons had with their
life-blood helped on the British reverse at
Modder River, one lay buried on the field at
Elandslaagte, one at Magersfontein, one had
been flung in the river at Jacobsdal, here was
the sixth come home to her.

She turned from the bed a moment to her
niece, the English-speaking girl, who had
been a teacher in Johannesburg, but had come
to her aunt for refuge at the beginning of
the war, and remained as mainstay of the farm.

'Take those shrieking girls out of my
hearing, Linda!' she said.  'Let no one come
in to me.'  She closed the door of the
bedroom in their faces.

Linda turned away.

'I must get some hot drinks,' she said.
'Grandfather and the girls will take cold.
Where are you going?'

'Oh, I'll get along now,' said Mortimer.

'Nonsense!' said the girl; 'you must dry
yourself and eat and drink.'  She moved
towards the kitchen.

'Oh,' said Mortimer, 'I'd better go.  Just
think, I might have been one of the lot who
knocked that poor chap over.'

'We cannot stay to think of that,' the girl
answered.  'You helped us; you must stay
till the storm is over.'

'But,' urged Mortimer again, 'how will
*she* feel?' and he glanced at the closed
bedroom door.

'Oh, she understands,' said Linda; 'her
feeling is not against individuals.  Your soldiers
have eaten and rested here three or four times,
for we are almost the only people left.  We
stay because we have nowhere to go, and we
none of us care what happens.'

Mortimer went to the door.

'I must see to my poor horse,' he said
presently.

The girl summoned the stolid-faced little
boys—sons they were of the sons who were
slain.  She gave them a lantern, and bade
them show the strange guest the stables.  Then
she ran to the kitchen herself.

Mortimer was twenty minutes drying down
his horse, feeding it, making it comfortable,
for the fate of his despatches rested
on its welfare.  Then he went back to the
kitchen.

The mother was there.  She had left her
dead after a few minutes, to busy herself with
the task of getting all the wet figures into dry
garments.  She was mixing drinks, hot, strong
drinks that made the girls blink and choke
even while it restored them.  She had the
grandfather wrapped in rugs, sitting closest of
all to the fire.

When Mortimer stood in the doorway,
dripping helmet, dripping khaki suit, she
moved towards him.

'Drink this,' she said, and gave him a deep
mug of hot liquid.

He swallowed it gratefully, for the cold
seemed in his very bones.

'Here are some clothes,' she said, and picked
up a rough farming-suit that she had laid in
readiness on a chair—'here is a room.'  She
stepped across the passage.  'Change at once,
and hand me your wet things to dry.'

Mortimer obeyed her, and, after doing so,
sat down on the bed to await the call to eat
of the food the girl Linda was preparing.

And then outraged nature took her revenge.
He had not slept for fifty-six hours; he had
been in the saddle eighteen hours of yesterday,
and twelve of to-day.  It was three hours before
he knew anything more, and then it was only
his cramped position on the bed that woke
him; except for that he would have slept the
clock round.

He sat up numbed, his heart beating
suffocatingly.  Where were his despatches?
What clothes were these he wore?  He fell
to his feet, a groan of horror bursting from
him.  What was this he had done—raw,
careless, culpable soldier that he was?  He had
never taken the envelopes from the clothes he
had handed the woman—the woman whose
sons' and husband's deaths lay at his country's
door, still unavenged!  Two strides took him
down the hall to the kitchen, his face was like
ashes.  All the little house lay still as the tall,
thin young farmer who, in the front room, was
taking his rest for ever from the ploughing
of fields, the sowing and reaping of crops,
the blind and strenuous guarding of his land
and liberty at the command of those in the
high places.

The fire still burnt brightly in the grate.
Linda sat before it so plunged in mournful
thought she did not hear the young bushman's
footfall.

Across one side of the fire a clothes-horse
stood holding the draggled skirts of the girls,
the grandfather's moleskin clothes, the familiar
khaki of the uniform he had disgraced.

His hand clutched the coat convulsively;
beads of sheer terror stood on his forehead.
Then he sat down suddenly, the passion of
relief bringing the tears of relief to his eyes.

The papers were there untouched; the
long envelopes with the red army seal upon
them stuck up out of his breast-pocket in
full view!  That woman, the mother whose
sons were dead, that clear-headed young girl,
they must both have known the importance
of the papers, yet neither had laid a finger
upon them, since he was their guest, their
helper!

Linda smiled at him in a pale way.

'You have come to say you are hungry,' she
said.  'I went to your room twice, but you
slept so soundly I thought the food might
wait.'  She put a dish before him, meat and
vegetables mixed up together.  'This is hot,
at least, and nourishing,' she said.

He thanked her, his voice still thick from
agitation, then ate while she went back to
her morbid gazing at the glowing fire.

'Do you know it is twelve o'clock?' he
said presently.  'Won't you go to bed?  I
am afraid you have sat up to keep this fire
alight for the food.'

She pushed back the thick hair from her
forehead.  No one could call her pretty, but
the clear eyes and the patience and strength
of the young mouth struck one.

'I think I was trying to see the end of the
war,' she said, sighing; 'but it takes better
sight than mine.'

'You?' he said pityingly.  'Have you
lost any one very near—nearer than these
cousins?'

She blenched a moment.

'One of them,' she said.  'I had been
married to one of them—a week.  We will
not speak of that.'

He begged her pardon, his throat thick
again.

She fought her lip quiet.

'Oh,' she said, 'it is the same everywhere;
our lovers, our husbands, our sons—all gone
from us!  Some will come back, of course,
but crushed and mutilated.  A little time, and
your army will only have a handful of women
to contend against.'

'We, too,' he said, 'we have lost our
brothers, our fathers, our sons.  Everywhere
we have women mourning.'

'Yes,' she said, 'I suppose so.'  She sat
silent a little time.  'But then it was you
who came,' she urged again.  'We used to
be quiet and happy in our own way, even
if we were unprogressive and unintelligent.
It seems, to a woman, we might have been
left alone.'

'Ah, but,' he said, 'there were bigger issues
than that at stake.  You have read—I can see
that you have read—you must know why we
are fighting.'

'Somewhere at the top,' she said, with a wan
smile, 'there may be a few—a very few—on
both sides who know.  But our men don't
know.  They have been told they will lose
their liberty and homes if they don't fight;
that is all any of my cousins knew, and they
went off to death, not cheerfully, but because
there was nothing else to be done.  Your men,
of course they come because they are sent, and
they fight their best because they are brave
and obey orders.  We have been insolent—isn't
that what you say of us?—and we must
be crushed.  But some of you must know the
rights of it all.  Think how much wiser you
are than we.  You read while we plough.
Those of you who know should stay behind.'

'No,' he smiled; 'that is not our way either.
We are no different from you.  We pay a few
great men to do the thinking for us, and if
they say it's got to be fighting, then, whatever
it seems to us individually, collectively we
just shoot.'

The fire burnt lower and lower; it was the
only light in the room, for the oil-lamp,
exhausted, had died out.  Outside the rain still
fell in straight soaking sheets over the thatched
roof of the little house.  A wind moaned
restlessly over the empty country; you fancied it
was lost and full of woe, because it had no trees
to wander through.  Once or twice a horse
whinnied, once or twice there came through
the night the inexpressibly mournful sound
of the bleat of a sheep.  You felt the rain
was like no other rain at all; it seemed
as if the land, swollen-eyed, was weeping
in the quiet of midnight for its unutterable woes.

The girl's head drooped back against the
wall.  Sleep had claimed her; but, by the
anguish of the mouth and the pitiful stirring
of the breast, you knew it was but to
show her the body of her young husband, cast
with a score of others in a trench, all wet
with red.

Stevenson sat, a cold sweat upon his brow;
he felt he was the only soul awake on all the
frightful continent.

Then through the silence of the house came
a woman's voice reading the Bible—the mother
seated a foot away from her quiet son.  The
thin wood offered no resistance to the sound
of her voice.

'"Gather up thy wares out of the land,
O thou that abidest in the siege.  For thus
saith the Lord, Behold, I will sling out the
inhabitants of the land at this time, and will
distress them, that they may feel it.  Woe is
me for my hurt!  My wound is grievous:
but I said, Truly this is my grief, and I must
bear it."'

The sound of the voice pierced into Linda's
wretched slumbers.  She opened dilated eyes,
and stared wildly at Mortimer.  And the voice
went on again:

'"My tent is spoiled, and all my cords
are broken: my children are gone forth of
me, and they are not: there is none to stretch
forth my tent any more, and to set up my
curtains.  For the shepherds are become
brutish, and have not inquired of the Lord:
therefore they have not prospered, and all their
flocks are scattered.  The voice of a rumour,
behold it cometh, and a great commotion
out of the north country, to make the cities
of Judah a desolation, a dwelling-place of
jackals."'

'Oh,' said the girl with a sobbing breath,
'it is only aunt, of course; she often reads
aloud like that.  But, oh, I have had such
dreams—such frightful dreams!'

The voice went on.

'"O Lord, I know that the way of man is
not in himself: it is not in man that walketh
to direct his steps.  O Lord, correct me"'—the
tone of the voice fell a little—'"but with
judgment; not in Thine anger, lest Thou
bring me—to nothing."'

'I dreamt—I dreamt,' said the girl, pressing
both hands on her throbbing heart—'ah, I
could never tell you what I dreamt!'

'Hush,' said Mortimer, 'don't try, don't
try!  Won't you go to your room, and try
to sleep in comfort?'

She looked at him with distended eyes.

'I daren't,' she said.  'O God, I never shall
dare to sleep again!'

The voice rose; the horrible exultant thrill
in it made the flesh creep.

'"Pour out Thy fury upon the heathen
that know Thee not, and upon the families
that call not on Thy name: for they have
devoured Jacob, yea, they have devoured him
and consumed him, and have laid waste his
habitation."'

The girl staggered to her feet.

'I will go and sit with her,' she said; 'she
should not be alone.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A Skirmish by the Way`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   A Skirmish by the Way

.. vspace:: 2

At earliest dawn Mortimer was up and
away again.

Linda had risen up and prepared breakfast
for him; quiet, capable, busied with frying-pan,
fire, the setting of a place at table; he looked
at her as she moved about the kitchen, and
wondered had not the sight of her face of
agony last night been a dream?  She even
rallied him a little.

'You must eat well,' she said, as she put
fried eggs and bacon before him—the pleasantest
meal he had eaten since he had left Sydney;
'you don't want to be out another night with
those despatches of yours loose.'

'I want shooting,' he said, his forehead
burning.

'Oh no,' she said, 'you are young yet to it
all; you will have plenty of time to learn
carefulness before the war is over.'

'I hope so,' he said.

'I am afraid so,' she assented.

Something struck him.  That soldier-farmer
in the quiet front room—who was to bury
him? who dig his grave?

'If I had thought,' he said, 'I would have
done it myself the—the grave, you know—instead
of having breakfast.  You girls cannot
do it.  Is the old man strong enough?  I
would do it now, but my time is not my
own.'  He looked at his watch.

'I have sent the three little boys to Du
Toit's farm,' she said, 'five miles away, to ask
them to send two of their Kaffir boys down.
All of ours have gone off.'

He shook hands with her when he was
going, thanked her for all she had done.

'It is nothing,' she said; 'we have to thank
you, yet we don't, you notice.  It is war-time.
Good-bye.'

The grey air freshened as the sun climbed
foot by foot up over the great kop to the
east.  The night's storm had left the veldt
fragrant as our own bush after rain.  The
deserted farms looked at him, a mist of sleep
and forgetfulness in their eyes.  Those every-day
fences, those gates made for farmers to
pass through, farmers' daughters to lean on
watching for their lovers, farmers' children to
swing on—was it possible half a dozen regiments
had gone crashing through and over them,
hastening to headquarters only a week before?

Mortimer looked at the healthy land with
a bushman's appreciative eyes.  He wondered
now many sheep the farms held.  A Boer
prisoner at the camp had told him the country
carried a sheep to six acres, an ostrich to
twelve, and a horse to twenty.  He speculated
loosely on the chances there would be for an
army of drought-ruined Australian settlers to
come here after the war with modern
implements and knowledge, and astonish these
pastoralists, who were a century at least behind
Europe in the way of agriculture.

'Even Cameron's ahead of them,' Mortimer
thought, his mind reverting sadly to the poor
little selection at Wilgandra that bounded
Hermie's life.

A heavy waggon went past drawn by a span
of mules, and driven by a Kaffir, who cracked
a whip of such length that the ordinary
stockwhip was nowhere beside it.

A bent old man, with a cart of vegetables
and a horse too decrepit for the war, crept by.
Smoke in a place or two went up from the
chimneys of the scattered farmhouses.  The
continent was awake.

Riding yesterday, Mortimer had never
known when he might run into a Boer picket,
but the farther he went now the danger
lessened—in another dozen miles he ought to
be somewhere about the beginning of the line
the British had made to defend a railway.
And after that his ride would lie through
country dotted over by the British army.

He pushed on; his horse was fresh and
ready again after the night's rest and a couple
of good feeds; his own spirits, chiefly owing
to his excellent breakfast, began to rise again
and push his carelessness from the chief place
in his mind; he grew aflame for a chance to
prove his courage, and respect himself once
more.  Before he left the camp it had been
held that a big engagement was certain in a
very few days; his mind leapt forward to it
now with a keenly sharpened appetite, and he
beheld himself making famous his country's
name by impossible feats of strength.

Crack!  To the left of him a firearm went
off; the bullet passed clear over his head, and
rattled on some loose stones as it fell.

He glanced round less in fear than astonishment.
At the spot the veldt was singularly
clear, and the nearest kopje was far beyond
rifle-range.  Whir!  A second shot struck his
helmet, a third grazed his shoulder!  His
horse plunged and reared; he spun it round
and faced a clump of karoo bushes twenty
yards to his left, the only place from which
the shots could have come, and even these
seemed absurd, for no shrub was more than
two or three feet high.  He raised his
revolver; his finger was at the trigger.  Then
he saw three small faces over the edge of one
of the bushes—three that he knew; they were
the stolid, secret-looking little boys who had
lighted him to the stable last night.

.. _`HIS HORSE PLUNGED AND REARED.`:

.. figure:: images/img-264.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: HIS HORSE PLUNGED AND REARED.

   HIS HORSE PLUNGED AND REARED.

'The little sweeps!' he muttered, but moved
his finger from the trigger, even though he
kept the revolver cocked at them.

'Do you want me to blow the brains of all
three of you out?' he called.  'Lay down those
guns this minute, or I will.'  He was close up
to them, and a sharp glance among the sparse
bushes showed him that beyond these small
youths he had no other attackers.  At the
sight of British might in the concrete form of
a mounted soldier standing right over them,
two of the lads instantly laid down their
ponderous old style weapons.  The third
essayed another shot, but his rifle kicked and
the bullet went wild.

'You young beggar!' said Stevenson; 'put
it down this instant.'

The lad obeyed sullenly; he was the eldest
of the three, and yet not more than twelve; a
thickset boy with a heavy, brooding face and
fine eyes.

'And what's the meaning of this little
performance?' said Mortimer.

Two of the boys had very little knowledge
of English, but the eldest had been quick to
pick it up from his grandmother and Linda,
who had just become his aunt.

'You killed our fathers,' he said doggedly.
'They've taken all the good guns with them,
or we wouldn't have missed like this.'

Mortimer had no doubt of it; as it was, the
shots had landed so near to the mark that it
was plain what was the Boer boys' pastime at
present.  There was something about the three
small lads that reminded Mortimer irresistibly
of Roly—Roly, hung all over with the kitchen
cutlery, or prowling about the bush with a
broken-barrelled gun, Roly lying face
downward behind a great ant-bed and picking off
his foes at a lightning rate.  He found it
hard not to smile.

'Hand me up those guns,' he said to the
eldest boy.

The boy gave him a stubborn glance, and
it needed the discharge of a cartridge over his
head to bring him to obedience.  Then he
handed the poor old musket up sullenly to the
conqueror.

'See here,' Mortimer said, 'you'll make fine
soldiers by-and-by.  Don't go and get
yourselves into trouble while you're young, and
so ruin your chances.  If it had happened to
be some one less in a hurry than I am, he'd
have marched you over and seen you among
the prisoners, just to keep you out of mischief.'

'He'd have to catch us first,' said the boy,
with a defiant smile.

'There is such a thing as putting a bullet
into the legs,' said Mortimer gravely.  'But
now cut along and fetch those Kaffirs for
your aunt.'

The boys turned round and struck off
dejectedly in a new direction; they had come
three miles off the road their aunt had sent
them by to execute this plot, secretly formed
by the eldest boy, for killing off one at least
of the enemy.

When Mortimer looked round again, they
were mere specks on the veldt.

'Poor little beggars!' he said, smiling as he
thought over the adventure again.  He flung
two of the rifles into the river; the third he
carried with him as far as the British camp, and
gave it to some one of the ambulance there,
promising a five-pound note if it were kept
safely till the end of the war.

'Roly'll go off his head at such a trophy,'
he thought.

He handed in his despatches not many hours
later, with no further adventures.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`The Mood of a Maid`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIX


.. class:: center medium bold

   The Mood of a Maid

.. vspace:: 1

'Do you know what it is to seek oceans, and to find
puddles, to long for whirlwinds, and have to do the best
you can with the bellows?  That's my case.'

.. vspace:: 2

Bartie had gone up to Coolooli for
the afternoon.  Old Mr. Stevenson had
taken a great fancy to the boy, and prophesied
that he had the making of a fine squatter
in him.

Stevenson had ridden in to the selection on
his way from Wilgandra.  It was not often
he passed the neat new gate in these days
without turning in.  He always felt a pleasant
glow of conscious virtue, as his eyes marked
all the improvements that had so suddenly
sprung up.

'Me boy's pleasing me,' he would mutter.
'It wasn't much to ask.'

He told the surprised Cameron that it was
his fad to leave none of his property
unimproved, and that he was merely making
the trial on this particular selection, to see
what might be done with a small holding.
Cameron was rather relieved than otherwise
that he no longer owned the place; the money
he had borrowed on it at different times was
almost equal to the sum he had paid for it
at first.  With such a landlord it was a much
less responsible thing to be merely a tenant,
especially as Stevenson, since he had foreclosed,
would accept no rent, professing that he was
getting the place ready for some one who
could not take possession for a year or two,
and that it was a convenience to him for
Cameron to stay on the place and keep it in
order.  The long-established character of the
man as hard and close kept any suspicion
from Cameron that he was being helped out
of kindness.

The old man had come in this afternoon
to carry Bartie up to Coolooli with him, to
show him the new invention he was about to
try for the destruction of rabbits.  Bart rushed
off to get his horse ready while Stevenson
stayed talking of the war and his son to
Mrs. Cameron.  It was quite a surprise to her when
she learned much later that the old man had
five other sons.  This one at the front was
the only one he ever spoke about.

He liked talking to this practical, sensible
mother of the family.  He felt amazed that
such a shiftless fellow as Cameron should
own such a treasure, and he felt, as he looked
at her, that the salvation of the family would
have been assured after her arrival, even if he
himself had not lent a hand.  With Hermie his
manner was unconsciously somewhat aggressive,
and she shrank from the rugged-faced old man
who looked at her so sharply from under his
bushy eyebrows.  He saw her one day as he
passed her in the verandah, reading a book
fresh from London.  Mrs. Cameron saw to
it that the poor girl had time now for such
rest and recreation.

'Can you make soap and candles?' he said,
stopping suddenly in front of her.

It was not likely such arts had been learned
on Dunks' selection.

'No,' said Hermie.  'At least, we did try
once with the fat to make soap, but it went
wrong.'

'How would you instruct your men to
corn beef or make mutton hams?'

Hermie looked at him distressed.

'I have never done any,' she said.

'Humph!' he growled, and went to untie
his horse, muttering, 'A pretty wife, a pretty
wife!' to himself.

This particular afternoon Bart went off in
high spirits, Challis watching him wistfully
from the verandah.

Hermie was—oh, who knew where Hermie
was?  Wandering up and down among the
roses perhaps, her eyes soft with tears—Challis
had found her like that two or three times—or
reading poetry in some quiet corner in the
paddocks, or writing it in the secret solitude
of her bedroom, or on Tramby's back riding,
riding with dreamy eyes down the road to the
sunset.  Wherever she was, she did not want
Challis.

Mrs. Cameron was with her husband.  Up
and down the path they walked, his arm round
her waist, her hand in his, talking, talking a
little of the future, not at all of the quivering
past, mostly of the tender all-sufficing present.
Challis, who had had such sweet monopoly
of her mother for so long, missed it exceedingly
now, while readily acquiescing that the turn
for the others had come.  She looked from
the verandah with yearning eyes.  It seemed
months instead of weeks since she had poured
all her hopes and imaginings and longings and
queer little fancies into that ever-ready ear.

Roly?  Roly was killing his Boers down
in the paddock, or wheeling heavy loads of
earth to make kopjes in the bush.  He would
tell her to 'clear out of the way of lyddite
shells,' if she sought him out.

Floss?  Floss, who hated a needle, was
sitting on the grass making, with incredible
labour, a pincushion for the mother she had
begun to love with an almost fierce affection.
Challis would have liked to go and help her,
but the child, if she pricked her fingers till
they were empty of blood, would have no
stitch set in it that was not her own.
Furthermore, all the dreams on the Utopia were
dispersed.  Challis had never buttoned one of
the little girl's garments, never tied a sash,
never brushed out a curl.  The small woman
had dressed herself independently ever since she
was three, and indignantly scorned all help;
she hated sashes—her straight light hair she
raked herself.  And though she accepted in
an offhand fashion the toys Challis had chosen
with such love and interest, she kept up an
inexplicably warlike attitude towards her, and
deprecated her on every possible occasion.
Her hands—'Pooh!  Well, I would be
ashamed to have hands that colour!  S'pose
you never take your gloves off?'  'Frightened
to walk in the bush 'cause of snakes!  Well,
some girls are ninnies!'  'Never been-on a
horse—'fraid to get on Tramby!  Why,
she—Floss—had galloped all over on Tramby
without a saddle when she was only four!'

Challis, sensitively aware of her own want
of courage to explore and grow familiar with
these bush things, got into the habit of
shrinking away when Floss came on the scene.

There seemed no niche left for her in this
home she had looked forward to; that was
what it was.  The place, rightly hers, had
filled up entirely during her long absence.

No one understood her, or tried to.  They
took it for granted that her genius and her life
abroad had lifted her to a higher plane than the
one on which they themselves lived.  It might
be very cultivated and beautiful up there, but
they were not familiar with it, and therefore
did not take any interest in it.

The girl tried hard to get on to their plane,
and be interested in their things; but they knew
she was trying hard, and it merely irritated
them.  Let her stay where she belonged.

It was so lonely, too—so very lonely.  Used
to the pleasant uproar and friendliness and
excitement of cities, this little clearing in the
great silent bush oppressed her intolerably after
a week or two.

She had been a little ill before leaving Sydney.
The doctors had said her nervous system was
completely run down—a shocking thing in a
child!  They advised complete rest for several
months, and expressed their opinion that the
quiet bush life at Wilgandra and roughing it
with children, who would take her out of
herself, would be the best possible thing for her,
and the triumphal career could be resumed
later on.

So there were to be no concerts yet, no happy
strivings to interpret Chopin's varying moods to
a breathless audience, to reach up with
Mendelssohn to his pleasant sunlit heights, to go
down with Wagner to strange depths that stirred
her soul.  She was to practise very little, to
appear in public not at all.  The papers
expressed their regret at her illness, and said a
kind thing or two.  After that her name had
no mention in them.

One paragraph she had read had touched her
to the quick.  Some interviewer who had been
to see her in Sydney wrote in his paper, 'Thank
Heaven, she is not pretty!  Her chances are
hereby much greater.'

Poor little Fifteen!  Her pillow was wet
that night.  She felt she had much rather he
had said, 'She has no genius, but she is very
pretty.'  She longed for Hermie's shining wavy
hair, for the sweet blue of her eyes, the pink
that pulsed about her cheeks.  Who cared if you
could interpret the waves and storms of Lizst's
rhapsodies, and let the keen little rifts of melody
in between the thunder until the almost
intolerable sweetness made the heart ache?  Who
cared that Leschetizky himself had taught you
and had tears in his eyes once, when you had
played to him the wind in the trees just as he
himself heard it?  What did all these things
matter?  Every one went home from your
concerts and forgot all about you.  Oh, surely
it were better to be so exquisitely pretty that
all who saw you loved you on the spot!

She looked at herself again and again in the
glass that night.  Until that wounding
paragraph, she had never given one thought to her
looks; the sensitive small face, the grey eyes
drenched with this new tragedy, the fair
straight hair falling over her shoulders—not
pretty, not pretty, and all the world knew it now!

She drifted in from the verandah to the
living-room, where the piano stood open as
Hermie had left it, when, imagining Challis
out of hearing an hour or two ago, she had sat
down to it for a few minutes.  But the cheap
tinkling stuff that comprised poor Hermie's
*repertoire*—the jingling waltzes, the
pretty-pretty compositions of Gustave Lange and
Brindley Richards, 'Edelweiss' and 'Longing,'
'Warblings at Eve,' and such—they set her
ear horribly on edge, though she would rather
have died than have said so.  It were less
torture to hear Flossie thumping conscientiously
away at 'The Blue Bells of Scotland' and
'We're a' Noddin'.'

The very piano was a heartache; it was
seven years since it had been tuned, and despite
the careful dusting of Miss Browne, the silverfish
led a gay existence in its interior, and
ate all the softness and depth from the notes.

But this afternoon the girl, with that vague
misery tugging at her heart, was driven to
it; nothing else could ease her.  She put her
foot down on the soft pedal, to keep the
discordant jangle away, and avoiding as much
as she could the B that was flat, and the
D that was dumb, and the F sharp that
Roly had torn off bodily, she worked off
the gloom that oppressed her with Beethoven
and Bach.

Roly came in.  He was arming himself for
a new attack on Ladysmith; he had the
kitchen poker and the stove-brush, the
tin-opener, a knife from a broken plough, a
genuine boomerang, the corkscrew, the gravy-strainer,
and the carving-knife, disposed about
his person, and he came into the living-room,
his eye roving about in search of fresh
implements of warfare.  Nothing seemed to
appeal to him, however, and he was going
out again discontentedly when he noticed his
new sister had dropped her hands from the
keyboard, and was resting her forehead there
instead.

He approached her with some awe.

'Can you play with your head too?' he
asked; then he noticed there were tears
running down her cheeks.  'Don't cry,' he said;
'I'll run out and ask mother to let you off.
Did she say you'd got to practise an hour?
Oh, I'll soon get her to let you off!'

Challis smiled faintly through her tears.

'It's all right,' she said; 'don't disturb
mother.  No one told me to practise.'

'Well, you *are* a muggins!' said the
uncouth bushikin.  'Catch *me* setting myself a
copy or a sum!  Why don't you go out
and play?'

Challis let a new tear fall.

'I don't know how to play at anything,'
she said.  'I never had any one to play with.'

Roly's breast swelled with magnanimity.

'Look here,' he said, 'you can be Cronje
if you like.  Here, you can have these two
for your weapons.'  He handed her the
stove-brush and the corkscrew.  'Come on down
here, I'll soon show you how to do it.'

Challis shook her head.

'No,' she said, 'I'm fifteen; it's too late
to learn now.  I'll just have to go on playing
and playing at concerts.  And who cares
when you're playing your very best, and
have practised one composition six hours a
day?  Who cares?'  She looked at him
miserably.

'Look here, Chall,' he said, a most brotherly,
kindly tone in his voice, 'it's only because
you play such fat-headed things, that's why
they don't care.  I can't listen to them myself.
Often when I've been digging my garden
outside the window, and you've started to
play, I've just had to go away.  If you'd
learn some nice-sounding pieces now, instead
of things like Flossie's scales, only worse!
There's Peter Small's sister, down in W'gandra,
you ought to hear *her* play; she can play
"Soldiers of the Queen," and "Sons of the
Empire," and "Absent-Minded Beggar," and
"Girl He Left Behind Him," and all those
things, and she jumps her hands about, and
runs up and down, and crosses them just as
much as you do.  If you like, I'll ask Peter
to get her to lend you them; I'm friends
with Peter just now.'

Challis smiled and dried her tears.

'I mightn't be able to play them, Roly,' she
said; 'so I don't think I'll trouble you to ask.'

'Oh,' said Roly encouragingly, 'you'd soon
pick them up.  You could watch her a few
times, and notice how she does them.  But
I'll have to be going now, Challis, if you don't
want me.  I'll be down in the bush at the
back, if you want to come and have a try
to play.  Don't let on to Brownie that I've
collared this.'  He pointed to the gravy-strainer
that adorned his breast.  I'll bring it back
all right.'

Left alone once more, Challis wandered
about the little house.  Miss Browne's door
was half open, to let in the evening breeze.
Miss Browne herself, her day's work finished,
was sitting at the table writing a multitude of
letters with a happy flush on her cheeks.

Challis looked on wistfully.

'Would you mind if I came in and sat with
you?' she said.

Miss Browne dropped her pen and jumped
up to welcome her.

'My dear, my love, why, you know you
may; most pleased, most delighted, whenever
you like—honoured, most delighted.'

Challis stepped into the little room.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Miss Browne`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XX


.. class:: center medium bold

   Miss Browne

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |    'I shall have no man's love
   |  For ever, and no face of children born
   |    Or tender lips upon me.
   |  Far off from flowers or any love of man
   |    Shall my life be for ever.'

.. vspace:: 2

What was it that broke the barriers
down?  The wet eyelashes of the
little music-maker?  The droop of her soft
mouth?  Or came there across that poor room
one of those divine waves of sympathy and
understanding that wash at times from a richly
endowed soul to a lonely stunted one?

Miss Browne found herself telling anything
and everything that had happened in her life,
and even the things that might have happened.
Not that the whole of them made a sum
of any account, if you condensed them; but,
told ramblingly and with pauses for tears, they
fell pathetically on the young listening ears.

Thirty-eight grey years!  Life in this
country town and that country town, in this
crowded suburb or on that out-back station
or selection—a hireling always.  The first
twenty-five had dragged by under English
skies that even in summer had no sun for a
motherless, fatherless girl, pupil-teacher from
the age of fourteen.  She bore twelve years of
it patiently enough, and indeed would have
borne another score, but two friends, stronger,
more restless souls than she, though chained
to the same life, told her they were going to
break through it all, strike out of the stagnant
waters of suburban England into the fresh,
glittering sea the other side of the world.

They were saving their salaries to pay their
passage to Australia.  Governesses were royally
paid out there, they had heard, and more than
that—they whispered this a little
ashamed—husbands grew on every bush.

Miss Browne scraped and saved for a year,
cheerfully shivering without a winter jacket,
happily heedless of the rain that came through
the holes of her umbrella.  If it had been a
question of economising in her diet, she would
have brought herself down to a crust a day,
in her eagerness to make a plunge into a
different life, but fortunately governesses are
'all found.'  The three women cheerfully
cramped their bodies third-class for the voyage,
letting their souls soar boundlessly in the
pleasant evenings on deck.

They came to their new land, saw it, and
after a few years were conquered.  Almost
the same conditions of life, the same sickening
struggle of a multitude of educated women for
one poor place, the same grey outlook.  One
found a husband; he took her to some
heaven-forgotten corner of North Queensland, where
she had for neighbours Japanese and Chinese
and Javanese, and he drank, as the men all
do in those forgotten corners, where alligators
are to be found on the river-banks, and
coloured labour crowds out the white man's
efforts.  She bore him six children in eight
years, and then died thankfully.  The second
woman went into a hospital and became a
nurse; for the last five years she had been
in Western Australia, kept busy with the
typhoid in Perth.  Once in a while she wrote
to Miss Browne; once or twice she had
eagerly said she was 'all but engaged,' but
later letters never confirmed the hope, and
now a dull commonplace had settled down
over the correspondence.

Miss Browne drifted from place to place,
place to place; there was nothing she was
capable of doing really well, and no land has
a hospitable welcome for such.

'It is a funny thing,' she said to Challis,
'but, however hard I try, I never seem able to
do things like other people can.'  Her eyes
stared in front of her.  'If it had been your
mother now in my place, she could have
managed; she is made of the stuff that never
goes under.  But you would have thought
any one like I am would have been sheltered
and—cared for—as so many women are
cared for.'

Challis stroked her restlessly moving hand.

'Sometimes,' she continued—her voice
dropped, her eyes stared straight out before
her—'sometimes I can't help feeling as if
Providence has pushed me out to the front,
and quite forgotten to give me anything to
fight with.'

Then she pulled herself together reprovingly.

'Of course, that attitude is very wrong of
me,' she said.  'It is only very seldom I think
that, my love.'

Challis squeezed her hand sympathetically.

'It will all come right some day,' she said,
with the large vague hopefulness of the very
young.

'That's what I have always told myself,' said
Miss Browne; 'but you must see, my love,
if—if it does not come right very soon, it will
be too late.  I am thirty-eight—there, there
is no need to mention it to Hermie or the
rest of the family, my love.'

'But thirty-eight is not old,' said Challis,
so eager to comfort, she left truth to take care
of itself.  'Think what lots of people are
fifty, and they don't think themselves a bit old.'

'But who will marry you after you are
thirty-eight?' said poor Miss Browne, unable
to keep any ache back to-night.

'Oh,' said Challis, 'lots of people don't get
married, and they are as happy as anything.'

Miss Browne's lip quivered.

'If I had been asked,' she said, 'then I
should not mind so much.  But I am—thirty-eight,
and no one has—ever asked me.'

Challis put her arm round the poor woman's
neck; she stroked her cheek, patted her
shoulder.

'Of course,' Miss Browne said at last, sitting
up with tremulous, red-eyed dignity, 'there is
no need to tell Hermie that, my love.'

'But you must have lots of friends,' said
Challis, looking at the number of envelopes
lying on the dressing-table.  The colour
ran up into Miss Browne's face.  She half
put her hand over the letters, then drew it back.

'If I told you about these, you would think
me so foolish, my dear,' she faltered.

'Oh no, I wouldn't!' said Challis.  'Now
I know you so well, I seem to understand
everything.'

Miss Browne got some little papers out of
a drawer, English penny weeklies devoted to
'ladies' interests.'  She turned to the Answers
to Correspondents pages, 'Advice on Courtship
and Marriage.'

'Those marked with a little cross are
the answers to me,' whispered Miss Browne.
And Challis read these three marked paragraphs:

.. vspace:: 2

'*Fair Australienne* writes: "I am the only
daughter of a very wealthy squatter, and have
two lovers.  One is a squatter on an adjoining
station, the other an English baronet travelling
in Australia.  If I marry the baronet, I must
leave my father, who loves me dearly; but I
care for him more than I do for the squatter.
What would you advise me to do?"

.. vspace:: 2

And the 'Aunt Lucy' who conducted the
page had replied:

.. vspace:: 2

'Marry where your heart dictates.  Could
you not induce your father to live in England
with you?'

.. vspace:: 2

'*Sweet Rock Lily*.—"I am eighteen, and,
my friends tell me, very, very beautiful.  I am
governess in a wealthy family, and the son
is deeply in love with me.  If he marries
me, he will be disinherited.  What should I do?
I love him very much.  And will you tell
me a remedy for thin hair?"

.. vspace:: 2

'The editor's answer is: "Try to overcome
the prejudice of the family, *Rock Lily*,
and all will go well.  Bay rum and bitter
apples is an excellent tonic."

.. vspace:: 2

'*Little Wattle Blossom*.—"I am seventeen,
and only just out of the schoolroom.  I am
passionately in love with a young handsome
man, who loves me in return; but my parents
are trying to force me into a marriage with
an old foreign nobleman.  They have even
fixed the wedding day, and I am kept a
prisoner.  What would you advise me to do?"

.. vspace:: 2

'The editor's answer is: "You cannot be
forced into a marriage in these days.  Refuse
firmly.  In four years you will be of age.
In answer to your second question, your friend
had better try massage for the crow's feet and
thin neck."'

.. vspace:: 2

Challis read in extreme puzzlement.

'I hardly understand,' she said.  'How do
you mean—these are to you?'

'It is only my foolishness, my love,' said
Miss Browne, gathering them up again; 'but
I get a great deal of pleasure out of it.  The
days the mail comes and I get the papers, I
am so excited I don't know what to do.  You
get into the way of feeling it really is yourself.'

But this phase of Miss Browne was beyond
Challis's comprehension, and she only looked
doubtfully at the papers, so Miss Browne was
swift to change the subject.

'These letters,' she said, 'are to the
Melbourne and Adelaide art societies.  I
should like to tell you about this, my love.
Your father, about four years ago, painted a
picture, and something happened that made
him try to burn it.  Well, we managed to
prevent that, and I got hold of it and hid
it away.  He has forgotten all about it now,
imagines I sold it, but I haven't, and it
occurred to me lately to write to several artists
and describe the picture to them, and see if they
would buy it.  I did not mention your father's
name; just said it was by a friend of mine—you
will forgive me for the liberty, my love?'

'But didn't you send the picture?' said
Challis.  'They could hardly tell from a
description.'

'I had no money,' said Miss Browne, sighing
'I made inquiries at Wilgandra, but it would
cost so much to have it packed and sent to
Sydney.  And there is the risk of losing it.
I was *very* careful over the description; it
took me five long evenings to write—I left
no detail out.'

'And what happened?' said Challis.

Miss Browne flushed.

'Courtesy seems dying out,' she said.  'Not
one of them answered.  It might have been
any lady writing—they could not know it
was only I.'

Challis asked more questions about the
picture.  She asked to be shown it, and waited
patiently while Miss Browne disinterred it from
under the bed, and took off the old counterpane
with which it was wrapped.

'I have never seen any great picture-galleries,'
said Miss Browne, 'but I know there is
something about this that must be good.  It could
not work up the feelings in me that it does,
if it were just an ordinary picture.  Look at
the man's eyes, my love—isn't the hopelessness
frightful?—and yet look at him well.  You
just know he'll keep on trying and trying
till he gets there.'

Challis gazed at it for a long time.

'Yes,' she said slowly; 'that is how it makes
me feel.  I feel I want to beg him to stop
trying, and lie down and go to sleep.  But it
wouldn't be any use.  You feel the storm
will last for ever, and the captain will go on
trying for ever to get to wherever he has
made up his mind to get to.'

'Your father intends it to represent the
Flying Dutchman,' said Miss Browne.

'Oh yes!' Challis said.  'Of course.  I
ought to have known.  But it is just like
this picture—just as sad.  And I play it too.
Wagner, you know,—Der fliegende Hollander,—it
makes you want to cry.'

'My love,' cried Miss Browne, 'you say
you know an artist in Paris.  Why, surely
that would be the very thing!  I believe they
are all jealous of him in Sydney.  Write to
your friend.  He would take notice of a letter
from you.  Write to him, and send the picture
too.  You can afford to, and it is not likely
to go astray, since you know the exact address.
Suppose we start to do it now?'

Challis sprang up with shining eyes.  It
seemed the loveliest plan in the world.

'It shall be our secret, you dear, dear
thing!' she cried.  'We won't tell a single
soul in the world—not even mother.  Let's
write it down that we promise.'  She pushed
pen and ink to Miss Browne.  'Write on
this paper,' she said, '"I promise Challis
Cameron faithfully I won't tell any one in
the world."'

Miss Browne wrote the compact down, smiling.

Challis seized the pen.

'I promise Miss Brown faithfully I won't
tell,' she wrote.

'Oh, my dear, my love!' said Miss Browne
distressed.  'My love, how careless of you!
I spell my name with an "e."  I never thought
you would forget, my love.  No, don't add it
on there; it looks as if it were an afterthought.
Please write it again.  We have always spelt
our name with an "e," my love.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`The Morning Cables`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXI


.. class:: center medium bold

   The Morning Cables

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  'With rending of cheek and of hair,
   |  Lament ye, mourn for him, weep.'

.. vspace:: 2

Bart came clattering at a great pace up
the path with the mail.  It was the
midday dinner-time; and such pleasant
appetising foods were the order of the day
now, boylike he did not care to be a moment late.

He took the saddle off, laid it down on
the verandah, drove the horse down to the
first paddock, and hastened in to the dining-room.

His father was just unfolding the daily
paper he had brought, and opening it to find
the war cables.

'Read them out, Jim,' said Mrs. Cameron,
looking up from her task of apportioning the
peas and cauliflower and potatoes.

Cameron read out the headings:

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center

'"DESPERATE FIGHTING AT KRUG'S SPRUIT."

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center

"GALLANT ATTEMPTS TO RESCUE GUNS."

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center

"OFFICERS SERVING THE ARTILLERY."

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center

"FIFTEEN THOUSAND BOERS IN ACTION."

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center

"BRITISH UNDER A GALLING CROSS-FIRE."

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center

"BRITISH CASUALTIES."

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center

"CONSPICUOUS GALLANTRY BY A NEW SOUTH WALES PRIVATE."

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center

"LOSSES OF AUSTRALIAN TROOPS."'

.. vspace:: 2

The last two headings sent Cameron's eyes
hurrying down the long column to seek details.

'Oh,' he said, 'poor lad, poor lad!  Oh,
I'm sorry for this—sorry for this!'

'Not old Morty,' said Bart—'not poor old
Morty, dad?'  Yet even as he spoke he
knew it must be, for who else of all the
contingent had they a personal interest in?  He
pushed his chair back and went to his father's
shoulder.  His eyes read the meagre paragraph,
and burnt with swift tears for his friend.

.. vspace:: 1

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'CONSPICUOUS GALLANTRY BY A NEW SOUTH WALES TROOPER'

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was the heading of the cable.  Below it said:

'During the engagement, Trooper Stevenson,
of the N.S.W. Bush Contingent, made a most
gallant rescue.  He galloped to the assistance
of General Strong, whose horse had fallen,
and bore him under a scathing fire to a place
of safety.  General Strong escaped unhurt,
and obtained another horse, but while galloping
after his troop through the dusk, Stevenson
was hit by a bullet, and killed instantaneously.'

'Just the sort of thing old Morty would
do,' Bart said, his throat thick.

'I am thinking of the poor old man,' said
Mrs. Cameron.  'It will kill him.  Jim, you
had better go up; you might be able to
do something.  None of the other sons are
at home.'

'I'll go, certainly,' Cameron said; 'but it
won't kill him.  His pride in the lad's courage
will keep him up.'

'I say,' said Bart, 'he won't have got the
paper yet.  That fellow Barnes was waiting for
the mail while I was, and he had been drinking
frightfully.  It'll be hours before he gets
back.  I saw him turn in to the Golden Fleece
as I came along.'

A strange stifled cry came from the end of
the table.  It was no use; Miss Browne had
fought desperately to keep her self-control, but
nature was too strong for her, and she was
struggling with a piteous fit of hysterics.

Mrs. Cameron went round to her, got her
to the sofa, opened the neck of her dress,
administered cold water, spoke firmly and
decidedly to her.  There was nothing in the
poor woman's cries for a long time, and she
only pushed at Mrs. Cameron, as if trying to
force her away.  Finally a word came from
her choking throat:

'Hermie!' she cried, and pointed to the
open door.  'Go—to—Hermie.'

Where was Hermie?  Mrs. Cameron looked
round in surprise.  It seemed only two minutes
since she had been cutting the bread, and
laughing at Roly because he had arranged his plate
as a battle-field, with the peas for the army, the
cauliflower as a kopje, the mashed potatoes in
dots for the tents, while a slice of beef made
the enemy's laager, and a gravy river flowed
between the troops.  Why had she left the
table like this?

'Go—to—Hermie!' gasped the shivering,
sobbing woman on the sofa.  'I—am—all
right—quick, quick!'

Where had the girl gone?  No one but
Miss Browne had even noticed her chair was
empty.

Mr. Cameron armed himself with another
tumbler of cold water, and came across to the
sofa.

'I will look after Miss Browne,' he said.
'You go to Hermie; perhaps she was a little
faint.'

'Down—the—path,' gasped Miss Browne,
'near the wattles, most likely.'

Mrs. Cameron made her way down the path,
looking from left to right, a puzzled expression
on her face.  The girl was nowhere to be
seen.  She looked among the roses, in the
various shady corners, beneath the trees.
Finally she came to the thick-growing wattles
near the fence, and a gleam of blue cambric
showed through the leaves.  The mother went
in among the bushes, and found the girl face
downward on the ground, sobbing in so bitter
and heartbroken a way that she was quite
alarmed for a moment.  Then a wondering
comprehension came; her girl was almost a
woman.  Was it possible she had cared for
this friend of the family in a different way
from Bart and Floss and Roly?

'My poor little girl!' she said, and sat down
on the ground beside her, and lifted the bright
head that had been Morty's perpetual delight
on to her knee.

But Hermie pulled herself away, and rose
wildly to her feet, and ran this way among the
bushes with her broken heart, and then that way.

'Oh,' she sobbed, 'go away, go away—I
want to be alone!  Oh, it is my fault!—I want
to be alone—oh, mother, mother!'—and she
came back to her mother's side, and fell down
beside her again, clinging to her piteously.
The mother said nothing at all—just stroked
her hair and let her weep as she would, and
soon a little calmness came back to the girl.

'Oh,' she said, 'if you knew how I loved
him, mother!'

'Did you, my darling?' said the tender
mother, and never showed the ache that was at
her heart because her child had kept so great
a thing as this from her confidence.

'Ever since he went I have been loving him,'
Hermie said, 'and yet when he told me, I sent
him away, and he was so miserable.  I am sure
that is why he went to the war.'

'And you thought you did not care for him,
then?' said Mrs. Cameron.  'Well, darling,
that was not your fault.'

'Oh, it was—it was!' said Hermie.  'You
don't understand, of course.  You never could.
But I shall be miserable now all my life!'

'You found you had made a mistake, and
you cared for him after all?' said Mrs. Cameron.

'I didn't know quite how much till to-day!'
sobbed Hermie.  'I have kept thinking of
him and thinking of him ever since he went;
out now—oh, now it is too late!  I know I
shall love him till I die.'

The mother's heart ached, as all mothers'
must do when their children have to stand
alone in a grief, and there can no longer be
any kissing of the place to make it well.

'It seems as if I have been blind,' went on
the girl, sometimes wiping the tears away and
hiding her swollen eyes, sometimes letting them
trickle unchecked down her cheeks.  'I can't
tell you how silly and small I have
been—thinking men ought to be just like men in
books, and never looking at what they really
are.  Oh, he was so good, such a brave fellow;
ever since he has gone, people are always telling
different brave or kind things he has been
doing ever since he was a boy.  And, just
because he wore clothes and ties I didn't like,
and sometimes knocked things over, I——'

Her voice choked, and she fell to sobbing
again heart-brokenly.

Mrs. Cameron was silent again for a space;
but when as the time went on the girl seemed to
abandon herself more and more to her grief,
she rose to her feet and drew the sobbing
figure up also.

'There is a hard task before you, dear one,'
she said, 'but I know you will do it.'

Hermie gazed at her helplessly.

'His poor old father does not know yet, for
Bart tells me his man Barnes is still drinking
in Wilgandra.  I want you to go up to
Coolooli and break it to him.'

'Me?' gasped Hermie.  'Me?'

'Yes, you, my dear.  You cared for his son;
it will establish a bond between you, and make
it a little easier for him.'

'Oh, I couldn't!' cried the girl, shrinking
back, actual alarm on her face.  'Oh, it is
cruel of you to even ask me, mother!  Why
should I do such a thing?  Surely it is hard
enough already for me!'

'Because you are a woman, my dear, and
must always think of yourself last,' the mother
said quietly.  'How soon can you be ready
to start?'

One glance the girl gave at her mother's face
that was so quietly expectant that she would
do the right thing.  Her head lifted a little,
and her mouth tried to compose itself.

'I have only my skirt to put on,' she
said; 'I can do it while Bart saddles Tramby
for me.'

Up to the cottage she walked again, and
put on the neat blue riding-skirt her mother
had lately made her.  She bathed her red eyes;
she drank two tumblers of cold water, to take
the choking from her throat.

'Father will go with you,' the mother said,
coming to the door; 'but when you get to
Coolooli you can ride on ahead.'

Through the pleasant winter sunshine they
rode, up hill, down dale, across bush stretches
where Mortimer's horse had worn a path for
them.  Coolooli faced them at last, secret
stern-looking, with its curtainless windows, its
garden barren of sweet flowers.  It was the
first time the girl had been so near her
lover's home.

She was among the trees now that lined
the drive leading up to the house; her father
had dropped behind, and was to follow on
in half an hour.

Her heart seemed fluttering in her throat;
a deadly sickness possessed her.

The old man was standing at a table on
the verandah; he had a great map of the
Transvaal spread open before him, and, with
small flags stuck in it here and there, was
following his son's footsteps.

He turned at the sound of the horse's
hoofs.  When he saw the rider he went
down instantly on to the path, to help her
to dismount.

'Well, little missie,' he said, 'it's not often
you ride this way.'  He looked at her
colourless cheeks keenly.  'What is the
matter—can't you jump down?'

She absolutely could not, and he had almost
to lift her off her saddle.  He tied the horse's
reins loosely round the verandah-post, and
looked at her again from beneath his shaggy
eyebrows.  He told himself he knew what
was the matter.  The family was in difficulties
again, and had sent this particular member of
it as an emissary to borrow money.  Well,
this freak of his son's was going to cost him
dear.  Still, the little thing was trembling
dreadfully, and evidently did not like her
task.  He put his hand on her shoulder
reassuringly.

'Out with it, lassie,' he said; 'how much
do you want?'

Hermie clung to his arm—her very lips
were white.

'Mortimer has been very brave,' she said;
'he has done something magnificent.'  Her
voice fell.

'My lad!' he cried, in a changed tone.
'Where? show me—I haven't seen the paper yet.'

She clung to it.

'You will be very proud of him,' she said
'All Australia is talking of him to-day.'

He pulled vigorously at the paper; his creased
old face had a strangely illumined look; his
hands were trembling with eagerness.

'I knowed it,' he said; 'he always had grit.
I've kep' expectin' this.  Well, I'll lie quiet in
me grave now, whenever the Lord up there likes.'

'Yes,' the girl continued, and gave him the
paper.  'All the world is proud of him to-day,
so that must help you.  He gave his life to
save the general's.'

The old man drew a curious breath, and sat
down on his chair; he opened the paper and
read the paragraph.  Then he read it again,
and again, and again, until his eyes had carried
the news to his brain twenty times at least.

'It was a fine thing to do,' he said at last.

'Yes,' said Hermie.

'No other Australian's been mentioned like that.'

'No,' said poor Hermie.

'It was a fine thing to do,' he repeated.  He
got little further than that all the time the girl
stayed; even when Cameron came up, all
a-quiver with deep sympathy, he still only said,
'It was a fine thing to do.'  After an hour or
so, he looked at them expectantly.

'I suppose you'll have to be getting back?'
he said; and Cameron and Hermie rose at once.

He saw them down the steps, and even
helped Hermie on her horse again.  Cameron
rode on.

'Good-bye, missie,' he said.  Then he shot
an almost aggressive look at her.  'You ought
to be fine and set up that a fellow like that
loved you.'

'I am,' said Hermie bravely.  'I shall be
proud of it just as long as I live, Mr. Stevenson.'

He softened a little, then looked suddenly
old and very tired.

'I want to be alone now,' he said.  'But I
don't mind if you come up again to-morrow.'

With that he went back to the house, the
paper still in his hand.  But the next day,
when she went, she found him pacing the
place like a wounded tiger.  The servants
told her he had been very quiet all the morning
and the previous evening, and had told them
all several times about the fine thing his son
had done.  But Barnes had brought in the
day's papers an hour ago, and he had been
raging like this ever since.  The girl found
him with bloodshot eyes and clenched hands,
walking the big verandahs.

'Go away!' he shouted when he saw her.
She turned and went into the house at once,
to wait the passing of the mood.  She stood
at the window of one of the handsome rooms,
and looked with dreary eyes out to the twin
hill that lay bathed in the clear sunshine half
a mile away, and never knew how often
Mortimer had sat at that same window,
smoking his after-dinner pipe, and building
his sunny cottage for her on the bright hill-top.

Presently the old man came in to her.

'Take the paper from me,' he said quaveringly,
and held it out to her.  'If I read it
any more, I'll lose me reason!'

The girl looked startled.

'I didn't know there was anything new
to-day,' she said.  'Bart told me he had lost
our paper on the way.'  Her eyes, large with
fear and grief, tore through the cables they
had kept back from her at the selection.

'Private Stevenson,' said a paragraph, 'did
not die instantaneously.  He was shot through
the jaw and through one lung, and dragged
himself to a rock, leaving a long trail of blood
behind.  He must have lingered in frightful
agony all night, for when his body was picked
up by the ambulance, it was found that he
had written the word "Cold" on the ground
with his finger.'

'Dear God, how can they do this?' Mrs. Cameron
had cried, when she saw the paragraph.
'Have they no sense of pity or decency, that
they print these frightful details?  This is more
terrible a thousandfold for those who loved
him than the plain news that he was dead.'

The poor little girl, who had gone up so
resolved to be calm and brave, screamed out
uncontrollably at the cruel news, then buried
her head in her hands to keep the moans back.

The old man brought her a glass of water
from the sideboard.

'Let's tear it up,' he said, and rent the
horrid news in pieces.  'Let's only remember
the boy did the right thing, and died like a
man.'

He found himself comforting the girl who
had come to comfort him.  She found herself
telling him with streaming eyes how she had
loved his boy and thought of him, even though
at the time he asked her she had said, 'No.'

'If only he could have known!' she sobbed.
'Perhaps, perhaps he was thinking of me part
of that night when he—was cold.'

The next day there was another cable about
the affair.

'The trooper who saved General Strong's life
at Krug's Spruit was Private Mark Stevenson,
of the Queensland Contingent, not Mortimer
Stevenson of the New South Wales, as reported
yesterday.'

Hermie tore along the road to Coolooli
to rejoice with the old man, since before she
had gone to grieve with him.

He was sitting on the verandah looking very
shaken and bewildered, and reading the third
cable as often as he had read the first.

'I—hardly understand,' he said feebly.

Hermie had seized his two hands, and was
shaking them joyously.

'He is alive—alive!' she cried.

He looked at her piteously.

'Didn't he do that fine thing at all?' he said.

'No,' she cried.  'Some other man did it,
thank God!  He is alive, alive—Mortimer—he
is not dead!

He drew his hands out of her eager ones a
little pettishly.

'They should be more careful with these
cables,' he said.

'Oh,' she cried happily, 'we will forgive
them anything!  He is alive—alive!'

'But he never did that fine thing,' he
repeated sadly.





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.. _`Conclusion`:

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   CHAPTER XXII


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   Conclusion

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..

   |          'Let one more attest
   |  I have lived, seen God's hand through a lifetime, and
   |    all was for best.'

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Life, so long a hopeless tangle, smoothed
itself out at last for the little family.
Challis was well again, and had gone off
to give a series of concerts in the respective
capitals of each colony; gone off in high
spirits, touched with sweet responsibility,
inasmuch as she was the bread-winner for the
family.  Mr. Cameron went with her this
time, and her mother stayed thankfully at
home on the selection.  And Australia, despite
the fact that she neither recited 'The
Absent-Minded Beggar,' nor yet had 'Sons of the
Empire' in her *repertoire*, gave her so warm a
welcome everywhere that in three months she
was back again at The Rosery with a fresh
thousand pounds put to her credit in the bank.

This pleasant sum was to pay passages across
the sea for all the family.

For, warm-hearted as the big overgrown
young island had proved, its eager, easily roused
enthusiasm would soon be turned upon some
other object, and there would be no permanent
opening for the girl-musician.  She must go
to the little, pulsing, crowded island the other
side of the world for that.

Mrs. Cameron had the plan of campaign all
in readiness in her head.  They were to find an
ideal house in a pleasant countrified suburb
just out of London, and Challis, accompanied
by her father, was to fulfil her English
engagements from there.

When she went abroad, they would all,
when possible, go with her, and make
headquarters in some inexpensive French or German
village.  The benefit of a varied life like this
would be incalculable to the young ones, after
the stagnant years at Wilgandra.

Bart was to go to an English public school
the moment they touched land after the voyage.
He had but three or four years left now in
which to crowd all his school education, and
he was eager to begin.  In general education
and the making of moral fibre, Wilgandra had
done a better work than Eton or Rugby could
ever hope to do.

'But I shall come back and be a squatter,'
he always insisted.  'No other life for me.'

'If he sticks to that,' old Stevenson said to
his father, 'send him back to me.  I'll give
him a start, and be thankful to do it.  He's
got the stuff in him to make the kind of man
this country wants.'

Then he fell to chuckling over the memory
of the calf that Bart had sold him, and so
started the intimacy between them.

Hermie was to travel as much as possible,
take lessons in various subjects from good
masters, and go on with her general education
under the able guidance of her mother.  And
there were picnics and dances and all manner
of brightness for her in her mother's campaign,
to counteract the grey monotony of her earlier
girlhood.

And, when the war was over, one in khaki
would step in and take the young life into his
keeping, and make all the sunshine for it that
a boundless love makes possible.

On his far battle-fields Mortimer knew now
the little girl's heart was his own.  His father
had written to him one of his characteristic
letters.

'I'm glad to hear, my boy, you're still alive,
but it was a fine thing that other fellow
Stevenson did for his general.  I take pride
that my name's the same.  But perhaps you'll
get a chance yet to do the same thing.  I've
been looking round, and I think the hill over
the way will make the best place for your
house, and I daresay two or three thousand a
year would keep you going for a time, as she's
not flighty and used to fine things, like Luke's
wife.  It's a pity she can't make soap and such
things, but maybe she can learn; she may
favour her mother, who seems a sensible body,
more than that fool of a father of hers.  I'll
give the little baggage credit, at all events, for
being fond of you.  A nice job of it I had
with her, when we thought it was you killed
instead of that fine fellow Mark Stevenson.
She was nearly crazy, because she said you'd
never know how she loved you.'

.. _`ONE OF HIS FATHER'S CHARACTERISTIC LETTERS.`:

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   :align: center
   :alt: ONE OF HIS FATHER'S CHARACTERISTIC LETTERS.

   ONE OF HIS FATHER'S CHARACTERISTIC LETTERS.

So Mortimer fought the rest of his battles
with a light heart, and many a night, when
the veldt slumbered restlessly beneath its
covering of white, harmless-looking tents, he
lay happily awake, thinking of the green twin
hill at home and the bright cottage that was
going to crown it.

'But I shall insist that he travels about with
you for a year or two before you settle down,'
said the mother; 'it will do you both good.
And he must bring you for a visit home to
us at least every three years.'

The girl went on her way, shyly, sweetly,
learning all she might to fit her for the high
office of woman and wife.

Miss Browne?

At first Mrs. Cameron had almost obeyed
the natural impulse to dismiss her kindly, give
her a handsome present of money, and help
her to find a comfortable situation.  But the
vision perpetually haunted her of the poor
woman with a strand of dull hair blown loose,
and her blouse and skirt not quite meeting,
and her face moist with perspiration, toiling
in one hot country town after another, getting
sparks in her eyes, cooking other peoples' food,
dragging fat babies out for a walk, battling
helplessly with naughty small boys and girls,
and distractedly saying to them, 'My love, my dear.'

This while she and her own family, their
eyes turned eagerly to a glowing future, sailed
thankfully away from all the misery and
monotony of the past.

She could not do it.  The woman seemed
to stand right in their path, a moral
responsibility for all their lives.

So while Mr. Cameron was away with
Challis on the Australian tour, she filled in all
her spare time undertaking a mission to Miss
Browne.  Her first battle was to make the
woman respect herself, trust herself.  She
ordered some clothes for her, well-cut coats
and skirts, warm-coloured home dresses with
soft lace to hide the bony neck and wrists.
She gave deep thought to a style of doing
her hair, and having found it, kept her to it,
insisting that she should give plenty of time
to curling those helpless strands and brushing
them and getting them into good condition.
She encouraged her to form her own opinions
on things, and teased her gently out of her
little eccentricities of speech.  She applied
herself energetically to making her capable
and efficient in the branches of housekeeping
which all these years she had so hopelessly
muddled.  The mission was sheer hard,
exhausting work—there were times when it
seemed almost desperate; but women have
battled far harder and with far less hope of
success with the Island blacks or the far
Chinese, and here was her work come to her hand.

'Why,' cried the changed woman, at the
end of a day that had seen the accomplishment
of a most respectable pie-crust, an almost
invisible patch on a coat, and a hard piece
of music mastered, 'I shall be able to ask
for ten shillings a week, I am sure, when I
go to the registry office again; I never used
to get more than five or six until I came
to Mr. Cameron, and I am sure I was not
worth the ten he used to pay me then.'

'My dear,' said Mrs. Cameron, 'you have
finished with registry offices.  I want you to
come to England with us, and help me
with Floss and Roly.'

This decision she and her husband had
only just arrived at; to leave her behind,
even improved as she was, would mean she
would soon sink back without stimulus into
her dreary ways.  So Challis gave yet one
more concert in a country town, to pay for
the extra passage money and frocks, and the
future they left to look after itself.  She had
a relative or two in England who might give
her a home; if not, well, unless life went
very crookedly again, they would always keep
a corner for her themselves wherever they lived.

But before they had been in London six
months the pleased Fates relieved them of
their anxiety.

Next door to them in the pleasant home
they had made was a widower, just getting
over—and without overmuch difficulty—the
loss of a wife who had insisted upon managing
his very soul as well as his house, and
his two children and his very respectable
cheque-book.

His small ones were running wild—he noted
the contrast between them and Floss and Roly,
whom Miss Browne seemed now to manage
so admirably.  The intimacy increased; the
change from his past, overruled existence to
the companionship of this gentle lady-help, who
deferred humbly to his opinions, and asked his
advice, and was curiously grateful for the
smallest attention, was such a restful novelty
to him that he offered her his hand and heart
and lonely little children forthwith.

And now that Fortune, so long harsh and
uncompromising, had taken to flinging gifts
at the family with unstinted hand, it did not
leave Cameron himself out of its scheme of
sudden generosity.

The picture of the ship had found its way
safely from under Miss Browne's bed at
Wilgandra across the sea to the artist who
painted in leafy Fontainebleau pictures the
world was pleased to stand and look at long.

And the man's artist-soul rose in recognition
of the passion and strength that had gone forth
into the brush that had worked so feverishly
in that far-away bush township.

An important Paris exhibition was just
coming on.  He rushed up to the city with
the canvas, and his influence got it in at the
right time, and saw it well hung.  The second
day the exhibition was opened it sold for two
hundred guineas, and the path Cameron had
ached to walk on all his life was at last open
to his feet.

The day had not dropped her burdens
from the backs of these people for ever; it
had merely strengthened weak shoulders with
soldierly discipline, and readjusted the weight.

Bright days, sad days, separations, meetings,
temptations, love, death, all would come along,
as they always have done, as they always will.

For this is Life we fare upon, and not
just a little journey to ask smooth ground for
all the way.

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.. class:: center

THE END.

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.. class:: center small white-space-pre-line

*Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ltd.,
London and Aylesbury.*

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   The Favourite Author Series.

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*A splendid series of entertaining stories, by Popular Authors,
for girls still at school.  Illustrated.*

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A poor farmer's daughter, "an unlearned woman," tells the
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A most graphic and powerful story.  The career of the heroine
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A charming story for children of life in England and America
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A powerful story, the general teaching showing how sinful habits
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Dwell Deep.  By AMY LE FEUVRE.

The difficulties and happiness of a very sober-minded girl among
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A thoroughly interesting story for young people, who will find
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Was I Right?  By Mrs. O. F. WALTON.

Should a woman marry a man who has not her own religious
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This helpful story shows how a little girl found her way to
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The Wonderful Door; or, Nemo.  By Mrs. O. F. WALTON

A very spirited and amusing story of a nameless child who is
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Kiddie; or, The Shining Way.  By AMY WHITTLE.

Kiddie is a child of misfortunes who escapes from the cruel
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Looking Heavenward.  By ADA VON KRUSENSTJERNA.
Translated by A. DUNCAN DODDS.

A Russian lady's sincere Christian character and conversation
bring blessings and peace to the hearts of all whom she meets.

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The Hillside Children.  By AGNES GIBERNE.

Risely's boyishly-clever criticisms and witticisms frequently
lead to his own undoing, and his venturesome pranks bring trouble.

.. vspace:: 2

The Scarlet Button.  By KATE MELLERSH.

John and Joan discover an old family jewel, the fortunes of
which form the chief subject of this story.

.. vspace:: 2

Our Dick.  By LAURA A. BARTER SNOW.

A really good story of a boy who is a boy, and fights his battles
in a brave, manly way.

.. vspace:: 2

More About Froggy.  By BRENDA.

Froggy has much trouble, brought about by bad acquaintances,
and many adventures on land and sea, until all ends well.

.. vspace:: 2

Peter and Pepper.  By KATE MELLERSH.

Peter is a jolly little fellow, and the pranks he and "Pepper"
play together provide splendid and interesting reading.

.. vspace:: 2

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 2

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   POPULAR STORIES BY AMY LE FEUVRE.

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   *Illustrated.  Crown 8vo, cloth gilt,* 2s. 6d. net.

.. vspace:: 2

Harebell's Friend.  By AMY LE FEUVRE.

A pleasant story of domestic interest.  Little Harebell is full
of quaint sayings, high spirited, and has the most tender and loving
little heart in the world.

.. vspace:: 2

Laddie's Choice.  By AMY LE FEUVRE.

The small hero has to choose between living with a rich uncle,
or with his father who is poor.

.. vspace:: 2

A Little Listener.  By AMY LE FEUVRE.

A splendid story of child-life.  Trixie is a delightful little
prattler, very imaginative, and quite entertaining about things in
general.

.. vspace:: 2

Me and Nobbles.  By AMY LE FEUVRE.

A wholesome, natural story of a child who yearns to meet the
father whom he does not remember.

.. vspace:: 2

Miss Lavender's Boy.  By AMY LE FEUVRE.

A series of excellent stories all showing some pleasant trait of
human nature and inculcating good moral lessons.

.. vspace:: 2

Us, and Our Donkey.  By AMY LE FEUVRE.

A rattling tale of the doings of some rectory children who,
with a donkey, have many exciting adventures.

.. vspace:: 2

Us, and Our Empire.  By AMY LE FEUVRE.

An amusing story describing the various mishaps that befall
a family of children who formed an Empire League.


.. vspace:: 2

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 2

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*Charming Stories for Girls.*

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—BY—
Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey.

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Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey is one of the foremost writers of
girls stories.  All her works are full of brightness and unflagging
interest, and any girl who has not yet made Mrs. de Horne Vaizey's
acquaintance through her books has a great pleasure in store.

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*Illustrated.  Large crown 8vo, cloth gilt,* 3s. net.

.. vspace:: 2

About Peggy Saville.  By Mrs. G. de H. VAIZEY.

How Peggy rescues a rival from burning, plays innumerable
pranks, and disarms rebuke by her quaint ways, is pleasantly told.

.. vspace:: 2

More About Peggy.  By Mrs. G. de H. VAIZEY.  A
Sequel to "About Peggy Saville."

A charming sequel to "About Peggy Saville."  Peggy is never
short of an excuse to help her out of her scrapes.

.. vspace:: 2

Pixie O'Shaughnessy.  By Mrs. G. de H. VAIZEY.

Describes the remarkable experiences of a little Irish girl and
her family, containing a rich fund of exhilarating humour.

.. vspace:: 2

More About Pixie.  By Mrs. G. de H. VAIZEY.  A
Sequel to "Pixie O'Shaughnessy."

The happy-go-lucky O'Shaughnessy's are delightful, especially
Pixie, with her French hats and manners, and her Irish heart and
tongue.

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A Houseful of Girls.  By Mrs. G. de H. VAIZEY.

The hopes, the fears, the serious endeavours, the pranks, and
the love-makings of six bright-eyed maidens are here charmingly
set forth.


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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 2

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*Pure High-toned Stories.*

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center large

By Rosa Nouchette Carey.

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*Containing graceful, vivid pictures of girl life.  Abounding
in striking incidents and full of pathos.  The character
sketching is very true to life.*

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*Illustrated.  Large crown 8vo, cloth gilt,* 3s. net.

.. vspace:: 2

Aunt Diana.  By ROSA N. CAREY.

A characteristic love story by this popular writer, told in a
quiet, gentle, tender style, and with many strongly-marked
individualities.

.. vspace:: 2

Averil.  By ROSA N. CAREY.

A young lady of delicate health and with ample means, seeks
to befriend her poorer relatives, also various waifs and strays.

.. vspace:: 2

Cousin Mona.  By ROSA N. CAREY.

A charming story of two motherless girls suddenly bereft of their
father.  Their trials are told in Miss Carey's inimitable way.

.. vspace:: 2

Esther Cameron's Story.  By ROSA N. CAREY.

The whims and fancies, the mental qualities, and varying
dispositions of several girls are pleasantly set forth
in this chatty story.

.. vspace:: 2

Little Miss Muffet.  By ROSA N. CAREY.

From a wild, unmanageable schoolgirl, the charming heroine
develops into a sweet and lovable young woman.

.. vspace:: 2

Merle's Crusade.  By ROSA N. CAREY.

A delightful story for elder girls.  The heroine strikes out a
new line for herself as a nurse for little children.

.. vspace:: 2

Our Bessie.  By ROSA N. CAREY.

Bessie's sunniness of disposition makes her the delight of
everybody, and brings her a good husband and a happy home.


.. vspace:: 2

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center large bold white-space-pre-line

*Fascinating Stories*
FOR GIRLS.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center large

By Evelyn Everett-Green.

.. class:: center

*Illustrated.  Crown 8vo, or large crown 8vo, cloth gilt.*

.. vspace:: 2

Barbara's Brothers.  By E. EVERETT-GREEN.  3s. net.

Wulfric, M.D., and Gerald, would-be artist, have little in
common, so Barbara sees many family dissensions before her
brothers finally agree.

.. vspace:: 2

The Conscience of Roger Trehern.  By E. EVERETT-GREEN.  3s. net.

Roger's warfare with himself, a year or so of storm and stress,
is powerfully and skilfully told.

.. vspace:: 2

The Cossart Cousins.  By E. EVERETT-GREEN.  2s. net.

A charming love story.  A young brother and sister are left
unprovided for and thrown on their cousin's tender mercies.

.. vspace:: 2

The Family.  By E. EVERETT-GREEN.  3s. net.

Some reminiscences of a housekeeper.  A young wife at the
commencement of her married life, found herself unequal to the
responsibilities of her position.

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The Family Next Door.  By E. EVERETT-GREEN.  3s. net.

The "family" consists mainly of some unruly Anglo-Indian
children, over whom their mother exercises practically no control.

.. vspace:: 2

Fir Tree Farm.  By E. EVERETT-GREEN.  2s. net.

Davenant trod the downward path, passed through the depths
of degradation and despair, but finally struggled back from darkness.

.. vspace:: 2

Greyfriars.  By E. EVERETT-GREEN.  2s. net.

Esther takes charge of her married sister's home, and has much
trouble with the children left in her care.


.. vspace:: 2

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center large bold

*Every Girl's Bookshelf.*

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

*A Splendid Series of Stories for Girls.  Each with Two
Illustrations in colour, and coloured medallion on cover.*

.. class:: center

*Large crown 8vo, cloth gilt, coloured wrapper,* 2s. net.

.. vspace:: 2

Her Treasure of Truth.  By H. LOUISA BEDFORD.

Madge Bramley, brought suddenly into contact with Alice
Masterman, acts on a generous impulsive desire to help her, with
splendid results.

.. vspace:: 2

Beryl's Triumph.  By EGLANTON THORNE.

Depicting in a pleasant manner a young girl's life at her sea-side
home.  Her final heroic deed completely changes Beryl's whole
life.

.. vspace:: 2

Annie Carr.  A Tale of Two Hemispheres.

A sorely-tried girl passes through untold misery, not from any
fault of her own, but from the basest treachery.

.. vspace:: 2

Ellen Tremaine.  By M. FILLEUL.

A splendidly told story of a woman's hard domestic struggles.
Her husband is lost at sea, but turns up again at last.

.. vspace:: 2

The Girls of Marleigh Grange.  By M. M. POLLARD.

A very readable story, describing three years of a girl's life.
There is also a good love element in the tale.

.. vspace:: 2

Little Maid Marigold.  By ELEANORA H. STOOKE.

Little Marigold's winsomeness and unselfishness completely
undermined an unreasoning hostility and prejudice which her aunts
had conceived towards her mother.

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The Mysterious Locket.  By RUTH LYNN.

From a little motherless babe, rescued from shipwreck, Ermyn
becomes an heiress—and all by the aid of a locket.

.. vspace:: 2

The Mistress of the Manor.  By E. KIRBY.

A domestic tale of unusual interest, in which the heroine passes
through many troubles and trials before she finally marries happily.

.. vspace:: 2

Anthony Cragg's Tenant.  By AGNES GIBERNE.

An agreeably written story of a very good girl, a selfish,
deceitful woman, and a kindly man.

.. vspace:: 2

The Heart of a Friend.  By FLORENCE WILMOT.

A noble girl's influence and her genuine unselfishness has the
happiest effect on the members of a very mixed family.

.. vspace:: 2

Brown Eyes and Blue.  By ANNIE MABEL SEVERS.

There are thrilling episodes, deep mysteries and startling
surprises in this invigorating story of home and school life.

.. vspace:: 2

Arthur Glynn.  By RUTH LAMB.

Half-a-dozen well written tales, which combine interest of plot,
skill of narrative, and sound moral teaching.

.. vspace:: 2

Two Enthusiasts.  By EVELYN EVERETT-GREEN.

The efforts of an heiress and her companion to carry out their
views on social and religious questions are well told.

.. vspace:: 2

The Faith of Hilary Lovel.  BY EVELYN EVERETT-GREEN.

Describes the exciting times of the Spanish Armada, and how
the people of England rose unitedly to resist the attempted invasion.

.. vspace:: 2

The Romance of Miss Hilary, and other Stories.

Romances of humble life in which poor, hardworking people
make life beautiful by mutual sacrifice and unusual kindness.

.. vspace:: 2

Kitty and Kit.  By FLORENCE WILMOT.

A brightly written story of home life, spiritedly told.  Kitty,
an orphan girl, and Kit, her cousin, are especially attractive.

.. vspace:: 2

The Colleen's Choice, and other Stories.

An interesting set of fourteen brightly told stories inculcating
the maxim, "Be good, and you will be happy."

.. vspace:: 2

Dick and Brownie.  By MABEL QUILLER-COUCH.

A little girl, accompanied by her dog, runs away from a gipsy
caravan, and has many adventures.

.. vspace:: 2

Alwyn Ravendale.  By EVELYN EVERETT-GREEN.

A modern story of west country child life.  The young hero is
quixotic, and in the end proves a faithful lover.

.. vspace:: 2

Half-a-Dozen Sisters.  By EVELYN EVERETT-GREEN.

A pretty story of family life in which six sisters take their
varied parts, and into whose interests the reader is irresistibly drawn.

.. vspace:: 2

Brought Out of Peril.  By EMMA LESLIE.

An interesting story describing what befell a young servant girl,
silly, wilful, and easily led, although of good parentage.

.. vspace:: 2

A Turn of the Road; or, The Homeseekers.  By ADELAIDE M. PLUMPTRE.

Depicting the delightfully free life of a party of home seekers,
in the still wild country of Canada West.

.. vspace:: 2

The Young Gordons in Canada.  By MARY B. SANFORD.

A vivid account of the experiences and adventures of a family
that reduced circumstances obliged to leave the old country.

.. vspace:: 2

The Finding of Angela.  By ALICE M. PAGE.

Four girls come from Alexandria to a school in England, hoping
to find Angela, a poor little kidnapped baby cousin.

.. vspace:: 2

A Queen of Nine Days.  By E. C. KENYON.

An interesting account of the troubled but brief reign of Lady
Jane Grey, narrated by one of her maids of honour.

.. vspace:: 2

Lenore Annandale's Story.  By EVELYN EVERETT-GREEN.

A splendid book for young people, the pervading thought being
the fulfilment of duty in obedience to the commands of religion.

.. vspace:: 2

Veiled Hearts.  By RACHEL WILLARD.  A Romance of Modern Egypt.

The Sacred Carpet, howling Dervishes, and the Sword of Azrael,
form the groundwork of this fascinating romance of Modern Egypt.

.. vspace:: 2

The Orphans of Merton Hall.  By EMILY BRODIE.

Claire and Olive are foster sisters, and their youthful experiences
and girlish confidences are told in an entertaining style.

.. vspace:: 2

Joint Guardians.  By EVELYN EVERETT-GREEN.

A captivating and romantic tale of two families of cousins,
whose fathers are joint guardians of a young girl.

.. vspace:: 2

Tom Heron of Sax.  By EVELYN EVERETT-GREEN.

A country lad who began by scoffing at religion, ended in being
shot while preaching among rough quarrymen.

.. vspace:: 2

Fir Tree Farm.  By EVELYN EVERETT-GREEN.

Davenant trod the downward path, passed through the depths
of degradation and despair, but finally struggled back from darkness
to light.

.. vspace:: 2

Greyfriars.  By EVELYN EVERETT-GREEN.

Esther takes charge of her married sister's home, and has much
trouble with the children left in her care.


.. vspace:: 2

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 2

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*The "Home Art" Series*

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EDITED BY FLORA KLICKMANN.

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*Demy 8vo.  About 120 pages.  Fully illustrated.*
*Paper boards.*  1s. 3d. net.

.. vspace:: 2

The Home Art Crochet Book.

These designs are extremely handsome, the advanced worker
being as well catered for as those who are not so skilful.

.. vspace:: 2

The Home Art Book of Fancy Stitchery.

This book contains an amazing quantity of information which
will be found an extremely valuable addition to the needlewoman's
equipment.

.. vspace:: 2

The Mistress of the Little House.

Practical talks on domestic topics for educated women who are
not in a position to keep a properly trained servant.

.. vspace:: 2

The Craft of the Crochet Hook.

Giving explicit instructions which are augmented by illustrations
so clear that the most intricate stitch can be traced without
difficulty.

.. vspace:: 2

The Modern Crochet Book.

Contains original ideas for combining crochet with embroidery
and with fancy braids, together with new and unusual designs.

.. vspace:: 2

The Cult of the Needle.

A magnificent collection of new ideas, giving directions for
Bulgarian, Catalan, Hungarian and Baro Embroidery, and other
forms of needlecraft.

.. vspace:: 2

Artistic Crochet.

Novel Beadings, Insertions and Edgings, and exquisite floral
designs in Irish Crochet, are some of the contents of this splendid
book.


.. vspace:: 2

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 2

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*The "All Time" Stories.*

.. class:: center

*A Splendid Series of Select Books by Popular Authors.*

.. class:: center

*Illustrated.  Crown 8vo, cloth gilt.*  2s. net.

.. vspace:: 2

Alone in London.  By HESBA STRETTON.

A pleasant story showing that in whatever condition of life one
may happen to be, there are always some compensations.

.. vspace:: 2

His Little Daughter.  By AMY LE FEUVRE.

A high-spirited, mischievous little girl reads Bunyan's "Pilgrim's
Progress," and imagines and adapts the story to herself and her
surroundings.

.. vspace:: 2

The Vicar of St. Margaret's.  By M. G. MURRAY.

An interesting story of how a bright girl's life is clouded, and
her lover estranged by a crafty priest.

.. vspace:: 2

Max Krömer.  By HESBA STRETTON.

A children's story of the siege of Strasburg, 1870, showing how
the children were involved in the keen sufferings of the war.

.. vspace:: 2

David Lloyd's Last Will.  By HESBA STRETTON.

The incidents of this interesting story are connected with the
Manchester cotton famine in the early sixties.

.. vspace:: 2

The Highway of Sorrow.  By HESBA STRETTON.

A vivid story of village life in Russia, written with all Miss
Stretton's usual force and skill.

.. vspace:: 3

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LONDON: THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY.

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.. pgfooter::