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

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.

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.'

*CHAPTER X*

*'I Love You'*

'The bird of life is singing on the bough

His two eternal notes of "I and Thou."'

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.

*CHAPTER XI*

*A Squatter Patriot*

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!'

*CHAPTER XII*

*R.M.S. Utopia*

'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.'

[Illustration: '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.

*CHAPTER XIII*

*The Bush Contingent*

'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.'

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 _eclat_ 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.'

*CHAPTER XIV*

*Home to the Harbour*

'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!'

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.

*CHAPTER XV*

*Heart to Heart*

'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?'

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.

[Illustration: '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.

*CHAPTER XVI*

*The Rosery*

They cling in the moonlight, they kiss each other.

"Child, my child!" and "Mother, mother!"'