LESSONS.
Eileen had been overjoyed at the thought of staying in Sydney, and she
commenced school duties with a will. She was almost a beginner in many
of the subjects that Marcia was proficient in, but she was naturally
bright, and soon acquired a knowledge of everything.
On Saturday afternoons they played tennis, and on Sundays they had long
walks, and Eileen used to write home glowing accounts of how she spent
her time.
But learning music was her one trial.
"It's such a good chance," Mrs. Hudson had said, "for Eileen to get a
good foundation."
So the young visiting teacher at the College had Eileen placed on his
list, and after a few lessons he marked her down as a "non-trier."
Up the country she used to play by "ear" on an old piano that had long
since seen its best days, and now scales and such like were doubly
trying.
"No, Miss Eileen, not that way. Wrong! Wrong!" the teacher would cry,
impatiently, as wrong notes were struck or hands were placed in the
wrong position; and Eileen, who simply hated the humdrum, hammering
exercises, would grow sullen and wade through the rest of the lesson.
Things reached a climax after about a month of lessons.
"No, Miss Eileen, you're no better now than when you commenced. It's
agonising to have to listen to you. No time, no expression--you simply
have no 'soul,' no ear for tone, no----"
But Eileen turned on him with flashing eyes. "No soul," "No ear,"
rankled in her mind.
"I've got as much soul and as much ear as you have!" she cried. "You
think yourself, with your old music, don't you? Well, let me tell you
that there's plenty of cleverer people than you that don't know a note
of music, and if I can't play I can do lots of other things--yes, I
can!--and I'd like to see you up the country, trying to ride a horse,
and see where your 'soul' and 'ear' would come in."
She banged up her music and jumped up from the piano.
The teacher was simply petrified. To be spoken to like that by a little
country girl! Preposterous!
"Really, Miss Eileen, you forget yourself."
"No, I don't," answered Eileen, "but I'm just sick to death of 'soul'
and 'tone' and 'finish' and 'melody,' and all the rest of it, and I
would just like to see you up the country on a horse--and not old
Brownie, either!" and she marched out of the room before the time was
up.
"Really, a most extraordinary girl," murmured the teacher, as he sat
there and waited for his next pupil. He was only newly appointed to the
teaching staff, and did not have the knack of imparting sympathy and
enthusiasm to his pupils.
"I hate that old musical box," said Eileen that evening to Marcia.
"What old box?" asked Marcia, perplexedly.
"The music teacher, with all the musical letters to his name," went on
Eileen, calmly.
"Why?" asked Marcia, opening her eyes very wide. "I think he's
beautiful, and he has such glorious dark eyes."
"Ugh! dash his old eyes--they're as silly as the rest of him. He sits
there goggling and screwing and beating time like an old--old
Jack-in-the-box," concluded Eileen.
"Oh, Eileen! I don't believe I can ever take another lesson from him,"
laughed Marcia. "I'll laugh when I see him 'goggling and screwing'----"
"Yes, and bending down when the music's soft, and sitting up straight
and flapping his hands when the music's loud. Ugh! it sickens me; I'm
sorry I commenced to learn."
"Oh, Eileen! you are funny," laughed Marcia again. "And all the girls
think he's lovely; why, I'm just dying to tell them what you've said,
only it might get back to his ears."
"Oh, it doesn't matter!" said Eileen, with her head high in the air. "I
told him this morning what I thought of him."
"You--told--him--this--morning--what--you--thought--of--him!" gasped
Marcia.
"Yes," answered Eileen, and then she detailed the conversation.
"And you left him before the lesson was over?" cried Marcia.
"Yes, I left him sitting there, gasping."
"Oh, Eileen! you are brave; I'd never have done it. I'm real nervous at
my lesson."
"Pshaw! I'm never nervous, and I'm never going to be, either. I mean to
be an actress some day, you know, and it won't do for me to be nervous.
Thank goodness, actresses don't have to know music, and if I have a
dozen children I'll never let one of them learn a note unless they want
to. Playing by ear's good enough for me, and it'll be good enough for my
children."
Then Marcia went off into another peal of laughter. "Oh, Eileen, I wish
you'd stay here for ever!" she cried. "I'll miss you dreadfully when
you're gone. But I do wish you'd try hard at your music."
"Oh, I suppose I'll have to! But I'm more satisfied now that I've said
all that about 'soul' and 'ear.'"
About a week later Eileen got a most unaccountable fit of home-sickness.
She had received long letters telling her about the clover paddocks, and
the dew glistening on them first thing in the morning, and how fat the
horses were; and all of a sudden Sydney grew distasteful.
Sitting at her desk, the thought of those long green stretches would
come to her; the thought of the green-clothed gullies, with the children
racing up and down on their ponies; the thought of the big blue gums
along the creek, waving long brown strips of bark wildly in the wind,
and the big fire of myall logs burning brightly in the Gillong
dining-room at night, and the gleaming white frost on the corn cobs in
the cultivation paddock shining under the rays of the wintry sun. And
one day she put her head on the desk and burst into tears. She wanted to
be there straight away. After all, there was no place like home, and she
wanted to go right up and mount her horse and race all over the
paddocks. The teacher was astonished.
"But there's nothing to stop you from going home, is there?" she asked
kindly.
"N--no!" blurted Eileen, "but I didn't want to go until now, and it just
came on real sudden, like a bad tooth-ache, and I couldn't help
c-crying. I'm--I'--m not coming back to school any more. I'll get ready
and go straight home."
There was consternation in the Taylor household when they heard of
Eileen's resolution.
"No, I've been real happy with you, Mrs. Taylor, and I'll miss you all
dreadfully, but I'm real home-sick--you know, I think country people
suffer from home-sickness," she went on apologetically, "and I just
can't wait another day. Every time I hear the thud of a horse's hoof it
makes me lonely, and you've all been real kind--and--I'll always like
you--but--all the same, I must go home."
Mrs. Taylor just knew how she felt, and helped her to pack up, and was
as kind as her Mother, and Marcia was almost heart-broken.
"You must come back again as soon as you can, Eileen. Oh, dear! I won't
have half the fun now that you've gone. No one to talk to about people
and the music teacher or anything else."
Then Mrs. Taylor fell to worrying about Willie. She wondered was her
little boy home-sick, too, and didn't like to say; and she wrote him a
very long letter, and told him to be sure and come straight away if he
felt like it, and how she thought he ought to come home now in any case,
and how she missed him. And the heartless little Willie, when he
received it, grunted and said, "Just like a woman!" Then he sat down and
wrote her a long letter to satisfy her, and to let her see "once and for
all" that her little boy was not in the least home-sick, or even likely
to be.
And one afternoon Eileen boarded the North-West train, and with many
promises of letter-writing and much fluttering of pocket handkerchiefs
and farewell messages she was whirled away to the far North-West
Bushland.
And the same train that brought her home carried Willie's letter back to
his Mother:
My Dear Mother,
I am very, very happy up here, and I am not at all home-sick like
Eileen is, because you see I am kept pretty busy. Mr. Hudson doesn't
know how ever he can get on without me again. I am a great help to
him. Every evening I bring in the cows and pen up the carves. They are
little beauties--five spotted ones and a rone, and a red. If he was a
foal they would call him bay, but they don't have bay carves--only
red, so you will know that whenever you are talking about them; but
foals are bay, not red, and they'd all know you came from Sydney if
you started calling them the wrong names. I am a good rider now, and I
can yard sheep and drive horses and do thousands of other things. Tell
Dad not to go troublin' about getting me into an office later on,
because I mean to take a job of handy man on a station--that is, if
ever I leave here again. Mr. Hudson calls me his handy man, and I am
sure I am a great help to him. It wouldn't be very nice of me to leave
him when I am such a help, and, besides, I'm not a bit home-sick. If
you feel you want to see me very bad you ought to come up here. It
isn't so very far--only about 420 miles from Sydney; and if you are a
good sleeper you can go to sleep just after you leave Sydney and wake
up just before you get to the last station here, and you wouldn't know
you'd been travelling all the time, so you wouldn't feel a bit tired.
I hope you won't be writing for me to go home for a long time yet, as
I want to spend the winter up here, and then the spring, because
thousands of birds will build their nests in the bush trees, and I
want to see the young ones, and it will be very hard luck if I don't
see them after coming all this way; and I want to see the everlasting
daisies all over the paddocks, and I am sure you will be nice and kind
and let me stay; and I wish you were here now to have a good old roll
in the clover--it's great! I'm sure Dad would like it, 'specially if
he had his old gardening suit on, and it don't matter if it gets
covered with green.
The shearing was great. I wish we could have months of it. There is
going to be another one in the spring, and I'm going to be tar-boy and
general useful in the shed, and Mr. Hudson is going to pay me some
wages. I told him not to bother, but he says he will; so I'll send you
a check when I get enough to make one, and you ought to have a trip to
the mountains with it. I wish you were up here to see me working.
Well, Mother, I have written you a nice long letter. Excuse any
mistakes in spelling and grammar and stops, but I don't think there's
very many, because I've kept singing out to Mollie and asking her how
to spell a lot of words. I don't think I want much more schooling. I
think a man can make plenty of money without, and it's no use spending
money on books when you don't want 'em.
I hope now that you will know that I'm not home-sick. I don't think
boys do get home-sick much, 'cept when their hungry; and with love to
you and Dad from your loving and grateful and happy son,
WILLIE.
P.S.--Love to Marcia. I nearly forgot her. A man does soon forget his
sisters when he's away from them. Tell her I'll take her home a
present when I go--a kangaroo or emu or some sort of bird.
Yours truly,
WILLIE.
Willie's mother, when she received this, shook her head and said, "Well,
well, I suppose I had better let him stay; he seems so happy, but I do
wish he missed me a bit," she added with a sigh.
"He's too young yet to understand things," laughed Dad, as he re-read
the letter. "So Willie's just got into double figures, and he thinks he
has had enough schooling, and wants to start money-making. Well, well,
boys will be boys," and he pocketed the letter to show to some of his
cronies at the Club, while Mother spent the best part of the morning
hunting for it to show it to Auntie Grace, never dreaming that it had
already gone the rounds of the Club, where it had raised many a hearty
laugh, as seasoned business men recalled again their lost youth and
young ideas.