DICK GOES WEST.
Spencer Street Station, and the long line of the Adelaide express
glittering beside the long grey platform, the great carriages brave
with polished and shining glass and nickel. People were hurrying to
and fro, looking for seats, hurrying porters with trucks of luggage,
raiding the bookstall for bundles of magazines and papers, and the
fruit stall for oranges and bananas and baskets of early Queensland
strawberries. The express conductors, who are chosen for their good
manners, among other qualifications, stood near the entrance to the
saloon carriages, good to look on in their blue and silver uniforms;
quick to render aid to real passengers, or gently to head off idle folk
who merely wished to stroll through the train and look curiously at the
travellers. Boys, laden with bundles of evening papers, rent the air
with shouts of "_'Erald_--Penny _'Erald_!" snatched at coppers held
towards them through the windows, or impatiently sought for change for
anxious ladies who insisted on tendering half a crown for a paper, and
craned their necks anxiously after the boys as they rushed to the
bookstall for the money. People hurried along outside the carriages,
peering in through the wide, nickel-barred windows for friends whom
they wished to farewell. A theatrical company occupied several
compartments, and occasioned a solid block of people outside their
windows, through which their admirers thrust offerings of sweets and
flowers. There were snatches of song from this section of the train,
shouts of "Good-bye!" "Good luck!" and "Come back again!"--and many of
the newly-arrived bouquets were pulled to pieces by their owners in
response to the clamorous demand for souvenirs.
Dick Lester and his mother arrived in the wake of a porter laden with
hand-baggage, and fought their way through the throng until they
reached one of the blue and silver conductors. He glanced at the
number of Mrs. Lester's ticket, and then, ushering them into the
carriage, led them along a wide corridor until he came to an empty
compartment.
"This is yours, madam." He offered any other assistance, while the
porter placed their possessions in the rack and departed to see to
their heavy baggage.
"All this ours!" Dick queried, looking round the compartment. It was
fitted with a seat on one side only--a wide, comfortable seat,
upholstered in grey. A folding nickel wash-basin was near the window,
with towels overhead. Everything was solid and comfortable and compact.
"Yes, it's ours," smiled his mother.
"But you said it was a sleeper?"
"Yes; the conductor will wave his magic wand and produce your bed out
of that wall later on."
"Oh!" said Dick, and fell to examining the wall, to find out its
mechanism. Meanwhile the clamour about them redoubled; people hurried
along the corridor, peeping in, and withdrawing again impatiently at
sight of the occupied compartment. Others peered from the platform
through their windows, and a heated lady asked anxiously, "Is that you,
Willie dear?" and then fled without waiting for an answer. Bells rang,
somewhere afar the engine gave a furious whistle, and slowly the great
train slid out of the station, while the theatrical people and their
friends sang "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" with immense enthusiasm.
Gathering speed, they whisked through the packed streets of North
Melbourne and Newmarket, and out beyond to the wide Keilor Plains.
"Off at last, Dickie!" said his mother.
"Yes." They looked at each other, very content.
Daylight held until they had flashed past Bacchus Marsh, with its deep
green of fertile farms, where the willows were beginning to wave their
long feathery arms; and soon after came dinner, which in itself was an
event to Dick. A white-jacketed waiter summoned them, and they
followed the long corridor, which seemed to swing under their feet,
until they came to a carriage fitted as a dining-room, with little
tables for two or four people, sparkling with polished glass and
silver-plated fittings on snow-white linen. The theatrical people
filled many of the tables; they were very merry, and rather
loud-voiced, calling to each other across the car. Dick privately
thought them rather entertaining, but he saw his mother wrinkle her
pretty nose two or three times in a way he knew meant disapproval.
One of the actresses came in a few minutes later, and, disregarding
shouted invitations to "come and sit here," finally paused by Mrs.
Lester's table, where there were two vacant seats. She hesitated.
"May I?"
"Of course," Mrs. Lester answered, making room. The woman sat down in
a tired way. She was tall and rather pretty, but her face, seen
closely, was lined and worn. She gave her order to the waiter
listlessly, and when her dinner came she only toyed with it. But she
stared at Dick in a way that would have embarrassed that young man had
he not been too hungry to pay attention to anything until the meal was
half over. Then he met her eyes so many times when he glanced up that
he became quite uncomfortable, and wished heartily that she had chosen
to sit at any other table.
"I sure do beg your pardon for looking at you," said the actress
suddenly. "It's vurry rude of me, I know. But the fact is, I sat at
this table just so's I could look at you!" She turned to Mrs. Lester.
"I've a boy in the States just about his size, ma'am; I've not seen him
for two years."
"Oh, you poor soul," said Mrs. Lester.
"Fact. He's at boarding school, and he writes every mail--never
misses. But that don't make up for wanting him. There's times when
I've just to get close to a boy and make believe he's my Jimmy."
"Are you going back to him soon?"
"Not for a good piece yet," said Jimmy's mother with a sigh. "We're
tourin' round a lot; business is good, and we keep extending our dates.
It's a long time--Jimmy's fourteen, and he'll be 'most grown up when I
get him again. Boys in Amurrica grow up terrible quick."
"We haven't seen my father for a year, and I thought that was pretty
bad," Dick said. "We're going to meet him now."
"That's real nice, isn't it?" The actress's big dark eyes lit with
quick interest. "I guess your father's wonderin' what sort of a boy
his son's grown into, same's I am."
"And I guess your Jimmy will be as glad to see you as we shall be to
see father," said Mrs. Lester, smiling. "What is he going to be?"
"Wa-al, of course he thinks he's going to be a sailor--all boys do,
don't they?" said the actress. "But he's got bitten with motors now,
so I shouldn't wonder if it's something engineering, after all.
Jimmy's got plenty of brains. That's one thing. Not that you care
much, when he's your only boy, whether he's got brains or not, do you,
ma'am?"
"I hope she doesn't, 'cause I'm her only boy, and goodness knows I've
got none!" said Dick, grinning.
Mrs. Lester laughed, rising.
"Brains aren't everything, certainly," she said. "We're slowing down.
I think this must be Ballarat. Come on, Dick, and stretch your legs on
the platform--we wait here for awhile." She nodded kindly to the
American, and Dick followed her out of the car.
It was Ballarat. They ran into a big, crowded platform, with a domed,
lofty roof, that glimmered mysteriously far above them. They went
outside and strolled up a quiet street, but were too nervous about
their tram to go far, since an Adelaide express waits for no man.
"Some day," Mrs. Lester said, "we'll come here and hear the bands play."
"Have they got many?" asked Dick.
"They collect them from all over Australia once a year, and they play
all the time for big prizes. That is, when they are not playing for
prizes, they are practising. So it goes on all day; you wake in the
morning to band music and you go to sleep at night to the tune of a
quickstep; and when you go out during the day you generally find
yourself keeping in step with a band marching beside you, playing for
dear life. Then each instrument has its own tune. I was once
inveigled into a hall where I heard forty-nine euphoniums play 'There's
a Flower that Bloometh.'"
"Forty-nine!" said Dick, laughing. "It sounds a bit tall. Did you
like it, mother?"
"I think it is necessary to be a specialist to enjoy that sort of thing
thoroughly," his mother said. "I fled at the nineteenth, and that
weary old tune beat in my brain for a week. But the other music is
lovely. We'll go some day, Dickie."
They came back to the station, and, finding the crowd too dense for
comfort, sought their own compartment, where a transformation awaited
them. The bare wall opposite the seat had been let down and now a
comfortable bed with snowy sheets was ready on each side of the aisle.
The conductor hovered near.
"Will you require anything further, madam?"
"No, thank you," Mrs. Lester said. "But we shall want morning tea,
conductor."
"The coffee and rolls at Murray Bridge are excellent, madam," murmured
the conductor.
"I remember them of old," said Mrs. Lester laughing. "Very well. Good
night, conductor."
"Now I'm going to bed, Dick," Mrs. Lester remarked, as the tall,
uniformed figure disappeared. "So you can run and get a wash and brush
up, and come back in twenty minutes, when I should recommend you to go
to bed too."
Dick thought the idea a good one, especially when he returned, to find
his mother comfortably tucked up, reading by a shaded electric light.
He slipped into bed quickly, and enjoyed a magazine, while the train
roared on its way, stopping occasionally with a great grinding of
brakes, and then gathering way again slowly as it left a wayside
station behind, and went swinging on through the night. The swinging
motion made him sleepy; he put down the magazine and lay drowsily
listening to the roar of the train. Once his mother glanced across and
smiled at him; later, he had a drowsy fancy, half a dream, that she was
bending over him, tucking him in. But he did not see the tired face of
the American actress later on. She tapped gently at the door, looking
apologetic when Mrs. Lester, in a hastily-donned dressing gown, opened
it.
"Were you in bed?" she asked contritely. "Well, now, I'm real
sorry--it's early, and I thought you'd be up still." She hesitated,
and a dull flush came into her cheeks. "Is the boy asleep?"
"Yes." Something in Mrs. Lester responded to the hunger in the other
mother's eyes. "Would you care to look at him?"
"I came to ask if I could. You see--it's two years since I had the
chance of tucking up Jimmy."
She came in noiselessly, and looked down at the sleeping Dick. He lay
with one arm flung up above his head; a very ordinary, healthy boy,
sunburnt and clear skinned, with just a hint in his close cropped hair
of the curls of his boyhood, and only a baby still to the two women who
watched him. The American stooped suddenly, and brushed his forehead
with her lips. Dick stirred, and said, sleepily, "Mother."
"I sort of had to," said the actress, turning in the corridor to say
good night. "You--you get kinder desperate for them after two years.
Thanks, ma'am, ever so." She glided away, leaving Mrs. Lester with
tears in her eyes.
All night long the train, with its sleeping freight, rushed and roared
through the desert country, passing over dreary leagues of sand and
sparse scrub. Sometimes the unfamiliarity of his surroundings woke
Dick, to lie drowsily for a moment in the dim light that filtered
through the fanlight from the corridor; then to float back lazily
through the gates of sleep. He woke in earnest about six o'clock and,
slipping out of bed, peeped through the window. The train was standing
in a wayside station.
"Tailem Bend," read Dick. "What a rummy name. I say, we must be in
South Australia. Great Scot! there's a camel!"
[Illustration: "'Great Scot! There's a camel!'"]
There was a string of camels tied to the station fence, all
scientifically packed with bales and bundles, their heads drooping
sleepily. The unfamiliar sight made the morning more than ever like a
dream. A tall, weather-beaten man in moleskins and a red shirt was
knotting the halter of the leading camel; his mate was wrangling with
the station-master about some parcel that should have been awaiting
him, but had failed to turn up. Dick heard the official say angrily,
"Well, you'll have to wait till the express goes out, anyhow. I'm
busy."
"And ain't I busy?" demanded the man. "Ain't I got the camels waiting,
an' high time we was on the track? Blow yer old express."
But the railway man had fled, and the man of camels could only glare
after his retreating back and mutter what he felt.
The conductor came past as the train gathered way, and nodded a civil
"Good morning" to Dick, who had ventured into the corridor in his
pyjamas to see if any other queer sights awaited him on that side of
the line.
"Sleep well?"
"Yes, thanks," Dick answered. "Why do they call it Tailem Bend?"
"Lots of people ask me that," remarked the conductor. "Some folks say
it's a shot at an old native name, but more believe it's because cattle
used to be tailed at the bend in the river here in the overlanding
days."
"Pity they don't stick to native names when they go christening places
in Australia," remarked a man close by. "Murray Bridge used to be
Mobilong, and it would have been more sense if they had left it at
that. Murray Bridge, indeed. What's the good of a name like that?
Here's the Murray, of course, and there's a bridge; so they stick them
together and cut out the pretty native name."
"There's some people," said the conductor, nodding assent, "who'd
sooner see their own silly names on a signboard than the best native
name you could get. That's why you get names like Harrisville and
Smithtown, and Wilkins's View all over the map of Australia. Take
Belalie now--that's a pretty-sounding native name for you, and it was
the name of a town all right. Then comes along some jolly old Governor
or something with swelled head and calls it after himself."
"What's that?" queried the other man.
"Jamestown," said the conductor with deep disgust; "Jamestown. And it
might have been Belalie. Right, sir, I'm coming." He fled in answer
to a fierce call from a sleeping bunk.
Dick realised that he was a little chilly, and peeped into the
compartment. His mother was still asleep, and he slipped into his
clothes as noiselessly as possible and then went in search of soap and
water. Returning presently, he found her sitting up, with a
dressing-jacket round her pretty shoulders.
"What, dressed, old man?" she said.
"Rather." Dick seized his brush and made an onslaught upon his wet
hair. "We're getting near Murray Bridge, mother--aren't you going to
have a look at the Murray?"
"I've seen the Murray before," said Mrs. Lester severely. "It's a
nice, wide river, but I'm very comfy, Dick."
"Lazy old thing!" said her son. "Well, I haven't, so I'm going out to
look at it." He dived for a clean collar, and presently hurried back
to the corridor.
The train was skirting a wide flat, across which he could see the line
of a river. They swung round soon to run over a very long bridge,
beneath which the big river ran sluggishly--wide and yellow, with low
banks. Below the bridge was moored one of the Murray steamers, a white
paddle boat with two decks; he could see no one on her, but a faint
curl of blue smoke was lazily rising from the funnel that marked the
cook's galley. There were fishing boats against the banks, and a
bare-legged boy of his own size was pulling a heavy rowing boat slowly
down stream. Then the train swung round from the bridge, and in a few
moments slowed into a station.
Dick hopped out on the platform. Very few people were in sight; a few
passengers left the train and hurried towards the refreshment room.
The conductor appeared presently, bearing, in a mysterious manner, many
trays.
"Coffee and rolls?" he said. "Is your mother awake?"
"Yes. I'll take her tray," Dick said.
"I'll see you to the door," said the conductor grimly. "You don't
realise how people dart out and cannon with you in the corridor until
you've carried trays round. Nearly turns your hair grey."
This Dick found to be true, for a very stout gentleman dashed from his
sleeper without warning, and would certainly have demolished all the
trays had not the conductor avoided him with a dexterity born of long
practice. Dick left his mother to her coffee, and went off to explore
the platform, nibbling his roll as he trotted along.
It was early, and a chill wind blew from the river. There was not much
to look at, so Dick found his way along the train to the huge engine,
and stood looking at her and admiring her. The engine driver was also
eating his breakfast, which consisted of chops, fried scientifically on
a red-hot coal shovel. He nodded in a friendly way to the small boy,
and they chatted until Dick's roll was finished, and a craving for
coffee took him back to the sleeper.
"I was beginning to wonder where you were," said his mother, who was up
and brushing her hair energetically. "Take the tray out, Dickie. I
want to get as much dressing done as possible before we start again."
She joined him presently in the corridor, fresh and dainty. They were
rushing along again between miles of grey fencing. Ploughs were
already busy in the paddocks, where flocks of white cockatoos settled
on the newly-turned brown earth in search of grubs. Past trim dairy
farms, with the herds slowly stringing away from the sheds after
milking; by little townships, where the air was blue with the smoke of
a hundred breakfast fires; by creek and gully, towering hill and
stretching plain, the express roared. People in the carriages were
beginning to wake up; heads, more or less in undress appearance, peeped
from the doors of the sleepers, and voices were heard demanding the
conductor and hot water. The summons to breakfast came presently, to
Dick's great joy, for the keen air had made him hungry, and when they
came back from the meal they found that their beds had disappeared, and
the sleepers once more bore the air of an ordinary compartment.
"We're in the hills now," Mrs. Lester said, glancing out. "Come to the
doorway, Dickie; this is the loveliest bit of any railway journey I
know."
They went along the corridor to the big doorway. The door was open,
and through it they could see that the train was rushing through hills,
steadily mounting all the time. The gum trees that clothed everything
with green waved feathery heads quite close to them, and, far as the
eye could see, golden wattle blazed through the scrub. Up and up they
went. White roads led away through the hill slopes; now and then could
be seen an early motorist spinning along in the joy of their perfect
surface. Then came the very summit of the climb, and the train ran
into a trim little station, gay with flowers, perched on top of the
highest hill.
"Mount Lofty," said Mrs. Lester.
"My word, what jolly houses!" was Dick's comment.
They looked from the doorway down into the green heart of the scrub.
Here and there, half buried in the trees, were the homes to which happy
people of Adelaide fly when the summer heat lies scorching on the
plains; red houses, with terraced lawns and gardens ablaze with
blossoms; grey houses, with roses climbing over high trellises. They
perched on terraces cut out of the sides of the hills, or nestled in
nooks in the gullies, their gardens gleaming like jewels in the dull
green of the eucalyptus. The curve of a road showed here and there,
white level, diving down into some unseen hollow. Dew yet hung on the
gum trees, and little wreaths of mist floated upwards from the gullies;
the bush scents filled the air. Everywhere birds sang and twittered in
the branches; everywhere the gold of the wattle gleamed through the
dull green of the scrub. Then the train moved on, slipping quietly
down, each moment revealing some new turn of beauty; until at last the
plains opened out below, and they could see Adelaide lying just where
the land seemed to end, and the blue rim of the sea widened, with the
smoke of the steamer making a long trail across the water.
"Wonder if that's our boat?" Dick said. "No, it can't be, because it's
coming the wrong way--amn't I stupid! Oh, mother, isn't it all jolly!"
He pranced gaily back to the sleeper, to lend a hand in collecting
their hand baggage. They were running now through trim, flat suburbs,
and presently, with a grinding of the brakes, they stopped in a big
station--Adelaide at last.
A helpful porter--brought them, as a kind of offering, by their friend
the conductor--collected their luggage and put them on a train bound
for Port Adelaide; a place of grimy wharfs and dusty streets, where,
after some search, they discovered their boat, the _Moondarra_, spic
and span in her dingy surroundings. Dick's heart bounded as he
followed his mother up the gangway. He had never before been on
anything but a Bay paddle steamer; to him, even the seven-thousand ton
inter-State boat seemed a mighty ship, and he longed to explore her
from stem to stern. It was with a feeling of disappointment that he
learned they were not to sail until the evening.
"It's really hardly worth your while to remain on board," an officer
told Mrs. Lester. "We've a rush lot of cargo coming at the last
moment, and the ship won't be comfortable before six o'clock--nothing
but noise and dust. I should advise you to go up to Adelaide for the
day. Why not have a run in the hills? Is your luggage on board?"
"It is on the wharf," Mrs. Lester said, glancing towards a laden truck
in charge of a porter.
"Give me the number of your cabin and I'll see that your steward takes
charge of it." He took them down the gangway, probably relieved, in
his heart, that they were going, since passengers are not beloved of
sailor folk when loading cargo is in progress. "Glorious day--too good
to spend down in this place," he said, wistfully, looking at the dark
masses of the hills.
They found a train about to start, and were soon back in Adelaide
itself; little city of wide streets, girdled with a four-square belt of
park lands. Wandering, somewhat aimlessly, up King William Street, a
tall man suddenly detached himself from a group at a corner and came
quickly to meet them.
"Why, Mrs. Lester--what luck?" He shook hands vigorously. "And the
kid--he's grown up!"
"Oh, Billy, how nice to see you!" said Mrs. Lester. Billy Cathcart had
gained "colonial experience" on the Lesters' station for two years
before his father, a rich Englishman, had bought him a property of his
own in South Australia. They were very fond of him; he had made
himself a kind of big son of the house, and when he went away they
missed him sorely.
"But what are you doing here? And is the Boss back?"
Mrs. Lester explained.
"And you never told me you were going through!" said Billy
reproachfully.
"My dear boy, I knew you were nearly two hundred miles from
Adelaide--and I had about two minutes' warning that I was coming. I
never dreamed of any possibility of seeing you. Why aren't you in the
wilds, earning your living?"
Billy Cathcart laughed.
"I've been earning it at a great rate lately," he said. "Made a lucky
deal in cattle, and cleared quite a lot--so I came down to buy a car.
I've been driving one a good bit, and it made me keen to have one of my
own. I say---if you've got the day to do nothing in, do let me take
you out. She's a beauty, really."
"Why, it would be lovely!" Mrs. Lester said. "But are you doing
nothing yourself?"
"Only killing time. It would be ripping to take you; and there are
first-rate runs about Adelaide. As for roads--well, they can teach
road-making to any other State I've been in. Like to come, Dick?"
"Rather!" Dick was hopping on one foot. "I say, Mr. Cathcart, how's
old Danny?"
"Oh, fitter than ever!" Danny, as a pup, son of a noted cattle dog, had
been a farewell present to the departing jackeroo on leaving the
Lesters' station. "He's an absolute wonder with cattle. I believe if
I sat in a buggy and cracked my whip and told old Danny to go ahead,
he'd muster my roughest paddock and not leave a beast behind."
"Father will be jolly glad to hear that," said Dick, solemnly. "He
always said Danny would turn out a clinker."
"So you're going to school?" Mr. Cathcart said, glancing at his
hat-band and badge. "You'll have to tell me about it presently. Well,
Mrs. Lester, may I get the car now?--or, wait a minute, you look a bit
tired; how about a cup of tea first? Yes, come along." He led them to
a café across the street, and plied them energetically with food.
"Not like the cakes you used to make us at Kurrajong--still, they're
better than nothing," he remarked. "Finished already, Dick? Well,
shall we go and get the car, and come back here for your mother?"
That seemed a good plan to Dick. He followed the tall figure out into
the street, where they dodged precariously round two of Adelaide's
flying electric trams, which hurtle down King William Street in fevered
haste, and presently found themselves in Rundle Street, a thread-like
thoroughfare where the footpath is so narrow that people are forced to
walk in large numbers in the roadway.
"Looks as if they'd used all the land for that big street we were in,
and found they hadn't left themselves enough over for this," commented
Dick.
"It does; and they put all their biggest shops in this tiny lane, so
that it's always packed with people. Quaint system," Billy Cathcart
said. "Rundle Street generally looks like a sheep race to me--and you
fight your way out of it into a street like a hundred-acre paddock."
"Rummy," remarked Dick. "I say--what jolly fruit carts!"
"Oh, they're the pride of Adelaide--amongst other things," laughed his
companion. "They take some beating, don't they?"
They were drawn up in line along the kerbstone, in the shade of the
buildings; carts as spic and span as shining paint and gleaming brass
and spotless cleanliness could make them, each in charge of a boy in a
white jacket. Their gay little awnings fluttered in the breeze over
piles of many-coloured fruit--oranges, red and yellow apples, dark
masses of passion fruit, bunches of bananas, strawberries gleaming
redly in little baskets lined with leaves. A boy near them was
polishing his apples, and the cloth he used was as clean as the apples
themselves.
"Well, I'm blessed!" Dick ejaculated. "They don't have carts like that
in Melbourne."
"No, you have awful men with barrows that look only fit for pig food,
and they tip about fifteen cases of fruit out in a heap, and wheel it
about in the sun with the flies sitting on it. Seems a pity," said the
Englishman, reflectively. He stopped at a barrow and bought fruit
largely, piling up bags in Dick's arms. "Can you manage all those?
Come along."
The garage was not far off; a great shed-like building full of odours
of petrol and lubricating oil, which are heartsome smells to any boy.
Dick poked about among motors big and little while his friend's car was
being prepared; and soon they were in it, and worming their way through
the crowd in Rundle Street.
"Can you really take a car along here?"
"Oh, it's possible," said Billy. "I'll admit it doesn't look probable.
You push people out of the way gently and politely with the bonnet.
But it pays to dodge up a side street, if you can, and get into
something wider." He slewed round as he spoke, and presently they were
running along the broad pavement of North Terrace, and so into King
William Street again and to where Mrs. Lester stood awaiting them under
a verandah near the café. They slipped away from the city, along
well-kept streets, lined with blossoming gardens, until, after a few
miles of a dusty road, the hills drew suddenly near, and they turned
into a gully where the road ran by the bed of a little creek, following
all its windings. The hills towered above them, and they climbed up
and up. Here and there came an open stretch, where orchards laden with
blossom fell away below them. Now and then the creek made a sudden,
sharp bend, enclosing a little flat, gay with tall bulbs. Indeed, all
the banks of that little creek were bright with flowers, because when
it ran rapidly in the winter it washed down a freight of seeds and
roots from the gardens of the houses on the summit. Sometimes tall
poplars stood, with their feet in the gurgling water; sometimes a
little cottage by the wayside displayed a sign asking wayfarers in for
tea, and you could cross the creek by a rustic bridge and sit in a cool
summer-house hung with creepers, and eat strawberries and cream in the
midst of a delightful garden. The road was steep, and yet so well
graded that the car took it without an effort. Even stray cyclists
whom they overtook seemed to be climbing its twists and turns without
undue exertions. So they came to the top of a long rise called
Montacute, where a lonely little tin church perches among the gum
trees; and there they sat in its shade, with a myriad birds twittering
about them, looking down over the tree-clad slopes to the plains
beyond, where Adelaide lay like a chess-board, a network of regular
lines and squares. They ate fruit and talked. Billy Cathcart had to
learn of a hundred happenings at Kurrajong, and to tell of more than a
thousand that had befallen him in his first attempts at running a
station unaided. He was a light-hearted person; it afforded him huge
amusement to tell of his own mistakes. "Goodness knows, there would
have been plenty more of them," he added, "if it hadn't been for the
gruelling Mr. Lester gave me on Kurrajong."
"Was it very bad, Billy?" Mrs. Lester laughed.
"Oh, he never meant it to be bad. But the first six months were pretty
awful, because I felt such a perfect fool all the time. The trouble
was," he grinned, "that I came out from home with an idea that I knew
quite a good bit. After I realised that I was mistaken I got on
better. But I never thought I would arrive at being a full-blown
squatter myself. It seemed to me I'd never get any higher than keeping
goats."
"That also has its difficulties, I believe," said Mrs. Lester smiling.
"I believe it has--a chap near me has a flock of Angoras, and they seem
to worry him more than his babies." He got up lazily. "Shall we go
on? There are so many places in these hills I want to show you that I
mustn't let you stay too long anywhere."
They came down from the hills at the end of a run that had been a long
succession of beauties, on such smooth roads, winding among the
tree-clad crests, plunging into deep gullies, finding little townships
hidden here and there, and coming out upon summits where, below the
ridges, the plains swept for miles before them, pink and pearly-white
with great stretches of almond orchards. Evening was drawing near as
the big car purred smoothly alongside the wharf. Billy Cathcart had
insisted on bringing them back to the boat at Port Adelaide.
"Well," he said, "it's been glorious to have you. And you'll let me
know when you're coming through?"
"Indeed, yes," said Mrs. Lester. "But you'll be two hundred miles away
then, earning your living."
"I'll let the station run itself and come down again," he said. "Do
you think I'd miss a chance of seeing you and the Boss again--to say
nothing of the nipper?" He gave Dick's ear a friendly tweak. "Just
you make your father stay here for a while, and I'll teach you to drive
the car, old son"--a promise that left Dick no words but a gasp of
delight. They stood watching as the car swung round, threading its way
between lorries, laden with beer barrels, and cabs, hurrying down with
passengers. Billy turned once to wave his cap to them, and narrowly
escaped collision with a huge coal waggon, the driver of which loudly
expressed the lowest possible estimate of his powers as a chauffeur.
Then he passed out of sight, and Dick and his mother turned towards
their ship.