IN TWO YEARS’ TIME.

BY

ADA CAMBRIDGE.

IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.

LONDON:

RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON,

NEW BURLINGTON STREET.

1879.

(All rights reserved.)

PRINTED AT THE CANTON PRESS, BECCLES.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

IN TWO YEARS’ TIME.

CHAPTER I.

NARRAPORWIDGEE.

“Seven o’clock!” exclaimed father, throwing his hat (with a very dirty puggaree on it) upon the drawing-room sofa. “Isn’t that confounded boy back yet?” Mother looked up from a low chair with her gentle face of reproof. She had a great objection to strong language, and, to do him justice, father seldom used it; but he was hot and tired, poor man, after drafting sheep all day in a north wind, and, moreover, the boy in question had gone to post for the English letters, and was half an hour beyond his usual time for returning.

“He started late,” said mother. “Pat Malony wanted him to help to put out a fire in the lake paddock. Go and change your dress, my dear, and we’ll have dinner. I think the wind is turning; it is not quite so hot as it was.”

Father obediently took himself off, puffing and blowing and wiping his forehead vigorously, his dirty puggaree flapping against his dirty grass-cloth coat (I don’t think he would have presented himself to us in that costume if it had not been mail day). Mother folded up her work and laid it neatly in her basket. I rushed out upon the verandah to consult the stable weathercock, and, finding that it indicated a blessed south sea-breeze coming round, flourished up all the blinds and flung open all the windows, which had been tight shut since early morning from the oven heat outside.

“Gently, my dear!” called mother after me, as the tail of my thin dress whisked round a rough bole of grape vine clasping a verandah post, and the bottom flounce parted with half a yard of lace. “I wish you would move more quietly, Kitty.”

“I wish I could, mother, but this lovely air is intoxicating,” I responded, tucking up my tail and dancing down upon the lawn and back again, with my hands stretched out. “I believe it will be cold by bed-time, really.”

The dinner bell rang, and I went indoors through the dining-room window, and took my seat at table. Father, spruce and fresh after a bath and change of clothes, stood up over a pair of boiled fowls, and shut his eyes, and muttered briskly, “For what we are going to receive—wing or breast, my dear?”—as if it were all one sentence (another little habit he had which mother would have liked to break him of, if she had not known her place too well). And mother, looking with her calm eyes upon the sun-browned, arid landscape beyond the garden gate, remarked, as she helped herself to a slice of pork, “I see Sandy now, crossing the ford. Let us get dinner over before we open the bag.”

We generally did what she told us, and we did now; but dinner was a brief ceremony in consequence. The fowls gave place to the puddings, and the puddings to the cheese, with a celerity that Ah Foo, the Chinaman cook, was not used to these hot days, and we left a lovely dish of raspberries and cream untouched for the first time that year. (N.B.—It was nearly the end of January, and they were just going out of season at Narraporwidgee.) Mother rose with her accustomed dignity, and went into the hall to sort the servants’ letters into the hands of Bridget the parlour-maid. She selected her own correspondence from the remainder, gave several letters and a bundle of newspapers to father, and then deliberately hung up the bag on its proper peg. Finally, we went out and seated ourselves on the verandah, now cool and breezy, with one of those sudden evening changes peculiar to the Australian climate; and father commenced operations by reading his newspaper telegrams aloud, as usual, and then tearing open the one English letter he had received.

“Well!” he exclaimed presently, and continued gazing at his letter, with a complacent smile on his honest face. Of course mother and I looked up at him expectantly.

“The market not gone down yet?” she inquired.

“No,” he replied; “I believe the tide is on the turn, but it hasn’t turned yet. Prices may even rise a little more, Norton thinks.”

“Dear me, I am very glad,” said mother; and so she looked, though she never visibly excited herself. She knew quite well that the price of wool, even at its then rate, if it lasted long enough (until father’s shipment arrived in London) meant an increase of a great deal to our income for the year; and she knew, too, that that increase meant so much more promise for her of the fulfilment of a great hope and scheme that she had cherished for many years. It was pathetic to see the wistful eyes that she lifted to his, as he continued to look in her face steadily.

“Yes, I know what you’re thinking of,” said he; “and I have been thinking of it too. I believe it might be managed now. I said to myself only this morning, while I was drafting those ewes, ‘If wool makes as much this year as it did last, I can afford to turn the whole concern over to somebody else, and Mary shall have her wish.’ So you shall,” he added, letting his broad palm fall upon her shapely shoulder. “We’ll wait till we hear the bales are in the market, and we’ll start home by the very next mail, if you like.”

I looked at mother, and her face was a study. A delight that would have overbalanced the self-possession of anybody else struggled to break through her cloak of dignified reserve, and she would not let it. Her eyes grew moist, and her mouth twitched at the corners; but she just took father’s hand from her shoulder, and laid it to her lips, and replied, gently, “Thank you, my dear; I shall be very glad. It will be such a good thing for Kitty.”

When father was a young man (what he calls a young man, about thirty-eight or forty years of age), he and mother came out to Australia to seek their fortunes, bringing me, a baby, with them. My grandfather had died several years before, leaving a home-made will, and my uncle, his eldest son, his sole executor; and uncle James, of whose integrity and uprightness no one had ever had the faintest suspicion, was tempted by some flaws in that irregular testament to take a mean advantage of his brother and sisters. My father, who was the last to see evil in any one, let things drift a little while, not suspecting mischief; but when the truth was suddenly forced upon him he arose to do battle for himself and his sisters with all his might and main. Aunt Alice and aunt Kate were both married, and of course their husbands joined the fray, with their respective family solicitors; and very soon the affair got into Chancery, and into the hands of about fifty lawyers (speaking roughly), and, after two or three years of suspense and misery, my father and my aunts—who had only right on their side, while uncle James had the law on his—found themselves no better off than if grandpapa had left them nothing, and, indeed, rather worse. Aunt Alice’s husband was a wealthy London merchant, and scorned to consider the loss of such a trifle as £5000; and aunt Kate’s husband, who was a dignified country rector of old family and ample means, paid his fees gracefully, and comforted aunt Kate by an extra allowance of pin-money thenceforth. But my poor daddy, hot and sore with indignation and defeat, reckless and disgusted with everybody and everything, gathered together what few hundreds he could call his own, told mother to pack up her clothes, and her plate and linen, and anything else she cared to keep, advertised his house and furniture, took our passages in the Great Britain, and shook the dust of his native land from off his feet for ever. “For ever” was what he said, and mother made no protest at the time against a sentence of perpetual banishment which almost broke her heart. Everything comes to those who wait, it is said: mother was wise and waited, and the things she wished for certainly did seem to come to her, sooner or later.

They had had hard times in their early years of exile. Father had not felt his privations on his own account: he was a vigorous, enterprising, hopeful man, to whom difficulties came with a certain pleasant zest. He was a born gentleman, too (though I say it that shouldn’t), and so was never troubled with those scruples of gentility which cause such poignant distress to many people in what they call “reduced circumstances.” He delighted in his skill as groom and gardener, builder and bricklayer, wood-cutter and butcher, and Jack-of-all-trades, and understood that the doing of all that rough work well conferred a new dignity of manhood upon him. As far as himself was concerned, I believe those struggling years were the happiest of his life, judging from the tone of his reminiscences, which is always tender, and heartfelt, and vaguely regretful. It was mother who suffered—poor mother!—without a word of complaint, of course. She had to be left alone whole days together, while father was working on his run, and the blacks used to prowl about the house and terrify her. There were swagmen turning up at all hours for rations—very shady characters, some of them; and there were the bushrangers (who, to be sure, never came, but might have come, which was almost as bad). The snakes used to glide between the shrunk boards of the floors; the wild dogs used to make her blood run cold with that dreadful howl of theirs at nightfall, when they came sniffing round after the sheep; the native cats were her torment in the poultry-yard, and the opossums as bad in the orchard. Worse than any of these, there were the wretched trolloping women—that was father’s description of them—that she had to do with for servants, when lucky enough to get servants at all, who wore her life out with coarse words and ways. Little brothers and sisters were born in the wilderness, and poor mother had to fall back upon an awkward man and a little child (me) to wait on her properly, and make her a decent cup of gruel when she wanted it. And the babies died in the wilderness, too, with little or no doctor’s skill to help them, and had to be laid in their little graves under a wattle tree, with only their parents’ love and tears to consecrate the ground.

But these were very old times. Father made money rapidly, as no steady and persevering man could well help doing, under the circumstances; and money, of course, brought us comfort in all sorts of ways. As fences meandered all over the run, and stock increased, and the value of wool with it, the weatherboard house grew bigger and bigger, and its new rooms were furnished more and more luxuriously. Then a better class of domestics, and many more of them, appeared in the colony, railways were opened, townships were founded and grew and flourished, lawyers and doctors, and police magistrates and bankers, began to organize some system of society in those little centres of population. We were able to drive to church over a macadamized road, instead of being restricted to a family service in the dining-room at home, as for ten years had been the case; and I was fortunate enough to possess in my governess an accomplished and well-bred lady. By-and-by, from a well-to-do squatter, father became an extensive landowner and a rich man. He bought his land easily by instalments before free selectors had discovered its value; and then land in Victoria suddenly rose to a great price, and his erewhile moderate estate became worth £60,000 at the lowest market rate. He had preferred sheep to cattle always; and at this time the owners of sheep stations had such a run of luck, in good seasons and high prices, for a few years, as they probably never had before, and seem never likely to have again.

Just at this flood-time in his fortunes, and before the evil days of drought and bad government fell upon the colony in general, and the class in particular to which he belonged, that memorable mail arrived from England which decided him to sell his property and go home. Just at first (when mother and he talked over their plans on the verandah that night) he seemed disinclined to sell, and proposed to leave a manager in charge of everything. But mother, without in the least assuming to give advice, suggested the difficulty of finding a man at once capable and trustworthy enough for so responsible a post, and the probability that such years of prosperity as we had had latterly would not, in the nature of things, last much longer. It had always been a land of vicissitudes, in which men made and lost fortunes with equal celerity; and suppose now (she hinted in the most modest manner) that droughts came and the stock died from starvation, or suppose the scab broke out again and swept them off, or suppose these high prices fell, as they were bound to do some time or another, or an ignorant Government succeeded in turning everything upside down.

“Then, perhaps, it would be wisest to sell,” said father, in a tone of deliberation that meant he had made up his mind to do so; but he sighed as he thought of all his improvements, and what a nice place he had made of it.

The fact was, father had an idea of coming back again, and I am sure mother never meant he should, if she could help it.

CHAPTER II.

AN UNEXPECTED PLEASURE.

I had my share in the conversation—and the lion’s share it always was—until Bridget brought tea out to the verandah. I was wild with excitement at this mighty change in my fortunes and the novel experiences in store for me, and I wanted immediately to know all about everything, from cabin furniture to the Zoological Gardens and Madame Tussaud’s, wild beasts and waxwork being objects which (grown up though I was, or thought I was) appealed far more strongly to my imagination than the museums and operas and picture-galleries that mother tried to tempt me with. By-and-by, however, I began to see that I bothered them a little, and that they had higher matters to talk over. So, when I had taken my cup of tea, I left them to enjoy theirs in peace, and, wrapping myself in a light scarf that hung in the hall, went down into the garden for a stroll.

It was a lovely, soft, cool night, raging hot and nasty though all the day had been. The north wind blew no longer, as if from the mouths of a million red-hot ovens: it had gone almost round to the south, and came rustling, fresh and sweet, through the trees and shrubs, with a dewy smell of flowers (from the few the drought had left) mingling with the faint hay scent of the burnt-up paddocks. There was a little crescent moon shining above the many roofs of the low house and outbuildings, showing the delicate transparency of the atmosphere, even on a cloudy night, as never moon could show me in England afterwards. Some great oleander trees (it would have been an insult to call them bushes) blushed rosily out from the half-darkness, nodding their pink bunches over the verandah roofs, as if proud to remind me that they were nearly all I had to depend upon in this scorching weather for the innumerable flower-vases that I loved to scatter all over the house.

It was such a sweet night, that it made me (even me) feel, all at once, a little melancholy. I began to think of some things I had forgotten in my first burst of excitement at the prospect of going home. It occurred to me, for the first time, to wonder whether I should really like England as well as my own dear Narraporwidgee? And could I part with Spring, my canine familiar, who was as much my shadow as any witch’s black cat? He was sniffing round my petticoats now, poking his wet black nose under my arm and into my face, as I leaned on the garden gate, in an attitude of contemplation that he was not used to, and could not understand.

The dear old dog! He seldom took a night’s rest anywhere but on the verandah outside my door—the glass door that was also the window of my bedroom; and if I did let him lie under my bed in the daytime when it was blinding hot outside, he was my dog, and it was nobody’s business but my own. Who would understand his ways and wants as I did? Who would take him down to the dam and the river for his swims, and see that he got the bits of mutton he liked best? And how could he bear his life without me?

At this stage of my meditations, when my eyes were filling with tears, and I was wildly resolving to pay his passage and smuggle him along with me somehow, if I had to sell my new watch and chain to do it, Spring jumped out of my embraces with a sudden energy that nearly knocked me over, and darted in pursuit of a wretched little opossum that was just scuttling up the trunk of my favourite plum tree. He scratched my arm with his iron claws, and I did not cry over him any more.

I began to think of the plums, which would be ripe enough for jam in another week or two. Oh, who would make the jam? And who would eat it? I had visions of strange people rudely criticizing our pretty house, rummaging about mother’s dainty store-rooms, and tramping over our sacred Persian carpet with muddy boots; and they made me very sad.

Then, by the vague moonlight, I saw the horses in the home paddock quietly sauntering about and enjoying the night air, and amongst them I easily recognized my own lovely Bronzewing—the most perfect lady’s horse, many people said, in the whole of the Western district. The pretty creature! I should know him from a thousand in any scrap of moonlight—the graceful droop and lift of his strong, supple neck, and the way he raised his feet as he trod the earth, that hardly seemed good enough for him to walk on. He whisked his silky tail from side to side, and nibbled, and glided from shadow to shadow, little thinking, poor dear Bronzewing, what was in store for him and me!

I wondered would daddy let me take my horse to England? Perhaps he would, if I made a great point of it; he never liked to refuse me anything if he could help it. Bronzewing was not like poor Spring; he really was valuable, in whatever part of the world he might be. His father and mother both came from England, to begin with. If daddy did not mind paying all that for the parents, he surely wouldn’t mind paying a little for the son, who had, as he always said, all the good points of both of them. It was hardly a month ago that the Indian buyer offered a hundred pounds for him, and father would not entertain the offer for a moment. So, feeling pretty comfortable about Bronzewing, I began to think of somebody else—Tom.

Tom was the only son of our next-door neighbour, and lived only five miles off, and he was my great friend. That is to say, he had been my great friend for years when we were children, until his father sent him home to Oxford, and then I did not see him for nearly four years. He had only been back about six months, and we had renewed our acquaintance on rather a different footing, for now we were both grown up. He was nearly twenty-three, and I was just over eighteen. But I could not say that we were not great friends still. He brought me some presents from Oxford when he came back—a pretty box for my handkerchiefs, and a book of photographs of the colleges, with a cardinal’s hat on the cover (he was a Christ Church man), and a set of Egyptian jewellery that he said was the fashion in England—and these were the greatest treasures I had in the world.

I had no girl friends that I cared for. A few young ladies lived around us, but mother did not consider them what she called “her sort,” and did not encourage any intimacy between them and me. (She was considered “stuck up” in consequence, which did not affect her in the slightest degree.) I seldom felt myself tempted to disregard her prejudices, for I don’t think they were my sort either. I did not like girls.

But Tom’s father was my father’s old friend, and his mother my mother’s “sort” exactly, the very image of her ideal gentlewoman, Mrs. Delany, as if she had stepped out of Lady Llanover’s book. And so, considering what near neighbours we were, Tom and I were intimate by the mere force of circumstances.

Did I say that his name was Smith—Tom Smith? I am very sorry, but so it was. He ought to have had a nobler name to match his noble height of six feet two and a half, and his noble, honest, handsome face, and the noble old blood that mother said he inherited on both sides; but—well, he hadn’t. And, after all, what does it matter? It is only in novels that names are always appropriate to the people who own them; it very seldom is so in real life.

When I began to think of Tom, I became far more melancholy than any thought of Spring or Bronzewing had made me. How Tom would miss me! And where should I find another like him, whatever part of the world I might go to?

Mother was fond of contrasting the manners of society in “her time” and in her country with the disrespect for les convenances which characterized some of her acquaintances of later years, particularly the young men; but I had seen plenty of emigrant Englishmen, and not one of them the gentleman Tom was in all his ways, not only after he left Oxford, but before he went there, though certainly Oxford life did develop and polish him wonderfully.

Sighing heavily, and caring no more for the Zoological Gardens and Madame Tussaud’s, I opened the garden gate and went out into the paddock. Spring, having barked himself hoarse at the opossum, which sat serenely on an exposed bough above him, with pointed ears pricked up and bushy tail hanging down, uttering a nervous little accompaniment of growls, discharged a final volley, and trotted after me; and, not consciously following any route in particular, we went towards the river, nearly a mile away, which was threatening to dry up into a chain of stagnant water-holes. Across the moonlit paddock, scorched to a sandy white; over the slip-panels in the fence, which, of course, I never dreamed of taking down; through a larger extent of burnt-up meadow, where white-faced Herefords came up to us and stared at us, munching audibly in the still night air; over another fence—a brush fence this time, instead of posts and rails—through which I scrambled where I saw a likely place, irrespective of gates, and in which my muslin train came to most dreadful grief; through more paddocks, this time sprinkled with shorn white sheep, who scampered away from Spring in the most abject terror, though he would have scorned to look at them; and finally into the shadow of the belt of gum and wattle trees that fringed the windings of the little river.

Any one who had watched me taking such a walk at that time of night, and especially if he or she had seen what came of it, would certainly have accused me of keeping clandestine appointments with young men—a thing I would no more dream of doing than mother herself, notwithstanding my unfortunate ignorance of Mrs. Grundy’s prejudices.

I was used to these wild rambles at all hours, considering my dog a sufficient escort. I was a thorough bush girl, as mother sadly acknowledged, and had no fear of strange men, or horned cattle, or snakes, or darkness, or rain, or anything else that I know of. And when, from under the bank of the river, a great curly sheep dog rushed up at us, and began to growl at Spring, the two wagging their tails and putting their black noses together, I was as much surprised and dismayed as ever I was in my life. It was Tom’s dog, as I knew in a moment; and of course Tom followed him up the bank to see what he was after. He must have been pretty much astonished too, when he saw me standing above him, in my white dress, without a scrap of hat on.

“Oh, Tom, what are you doing here?” I cried nervously, feeling my face and neck on fire—the first time I had ever been affected that way by a meeting with him.

“Why, Kitty, is it you?” he responded incredulously. “What are you doing so far away from home? You have nobody with you?”

“No—only Spring. We were just having a walk, and I thought, when we were so far, I’d see if there were any ducks in that corner where the moon shines. Father and mother were busy talking, and did not want me. I didn’t notice how the time was going. I’m afraid it’s getting very late, Tom?”

“Nearly nine o’clock, I should think. Never mind; it’s a lovely night. Come and sit on this stump a few minutes while I set my trap, and then I’ll walk home with you. Do you know what I am doing? Trying to catch some more water-rats for you. I’ve got two hung up in that tree. I’ve dressed thirteen skins already—wattle-bark, and pumice-stone, and all the proper things. You’d never know they had not been done by a furrier; they are as soft as wash-leather, and the fur like silk. If you cut off the yellowish part at the edges, and leave only the brown, they will be plenty wide enough, and you will have the swellest imaginable jacket by next winter.”

I took his hand and scrambled down the bank, in a happy flutter of shame and pleasure, renewing my assurances that I no more dreamt of seeing him there than of seeing the bunyip itself.

“Of course you didn’t,” he replied cheerfully. “But, you see, this is how it was: the moon got up, and as I had been too busy all day to see after them, it occurred to me that I might as well take a stroll down the river and look at my traps. And I’m very glad I did, Kitty. I’ll never spoil a good mind again, for fear of what I might lose by it.”

I sat down contentedly on my stump, and watched him tilting up a wooden candle-box with some sticks and a mutton bone and a piece of string, and arranging the primitive apparatus safely on a platform he had prepared for it; the while he threatened his dog, who stood over him, with the direst penalties if he ventured to interfere. And when I saw that he had quite done, I got up and turned to ascend the bank again.

“Stay a few minutes, Kitty,” he called out hastily. “Now you are here you may as well take breath before you start all that way home.”

I scouted the idea of being tired and wanting rest; but, while I hesitated, he held out his hand, and I turned back again and allowed him to reseat me on my stump. What would mother have thought? But I could not help it.

“We’ll give ourselves five minutes,” he said, turning the face of his watch to the moonlight. “It’s just a quarter to nine, and we’ll start at the ten minutes. Come here, you good-for-nothing brute! Didn’t I tell you to leave that alone?” This was addressed to his dog. “Now then, Kitty, what’s the news? I haven’t seen you for more than a week, you know.”

He stretched himself on the bank beside me, and took off his hat to the cool breeze. Did he know, I wonder, how he looked, with the moonlight on his wide brows and his strong, straight nose, and his close-cropped shapely brown head? Not he. But I did; and I wondered if I should ever see his like again, in England or any other land.

“Oh, Tom, news!” I cried out piteously. “There is dreadful news! Father has really made up his mind at last to go home.”

“The dickens he has!” responded Tom under his breath, suddenly raising himself on his elbow, and looking at me. “But I thought that was what you had been wishing for, Kitty, these years and years?”

“So I did—so I do,” said I; “but now it seems so near, somehow I feel it will be a great wrench.”

“It will be an awful wrench to those you will leave behind,” said Tom; “I know that well enough. How soon will you go, do you think?”

“As soon as ever father hears that his wool has got home safely.”

“Not much fear of that, I should think.”

“Oh, I don’t know. The ship might be wrecked, or be too late for the good market. And sometimes wool, when it has been packed damp, takes fire like haystacks—spontaneous combustion, you know.”

“I believe that is known to happen, about once in a thousand years,” said Tom, gravely; “but it couldn’t happen very well in this case. Why, there wasn’t a drop of rain all shearing, nor for ever so long after.”

“Well, at any rate, that’s all I know. As soon as father is satisfied that this last clip of wool is all right, we are to start.”

Tom was silent after this, and I began to think it was time to be going home.

“Wait a moment, Kitty. I can’t take it all in at once. How long are you going for? When will you be back?”

“I don’t think we shall ever be back,” I answered in a despairing tone. “Father is going to sell everything; and I believe, if mother once finds herself in England again, a team of bullocks wouldn’t drag her back.”

“No; a team of bullocks wouldn’t be much good, certainly. Oh, dear me! why didn’t you all go four or five years ago? We could have had some fun then.”

“I wish we had, with all my heart,” said I.

“And, I suppose,” continued Tom, in a very grumbling tone, “as you haven’t made your début in Melbourne, you’ll come out at home; be presented at Court, perhaps.”

“No, we don’t go to Court,” I replied, with a complacent sense of dignity and grandeur, as that mythical officer, with whom we are all acquainted, might have remarked of his regiment that they didn’t dance. “Grandmamma was the last of the family who was presented. But I dare say I shall see a great deal of company in my aunts’ houses.”

“I expect you will. I know what your aunt Alice’s house is, for I was there when Regy came of age. Don’t you have anything to do with Regy, Kitty; he is not a nice fellow.”

“Isn’t he? I’ve always heard he was very nice.”

“No, he isn’t. A good many fellows aren’t, in the set he belongs to. Do you know, Kitty, I’ve a good mind to sell out too, and come home to help look after you. You’ve got no brothers.”

“I’m sure you’re very kind,” I retorted, a little nettled by his disparagement of my relations; “but I have a father and mother, and they have managed to take care of me pretty well so far. Besides, how can you sell out? You have nothing to sell.”

“I beg your pardon. Since I came to man’s estate the governor has made me his partner. Half Booloomooroo belongs to me.”

“But you couldn’t leave the poor old man, and your mother. You don’t know how she pined and moped all the time you were at Oxford.”

“Poor old mother! no, of course not. I must just grin and bear it, Kitty. I must trust you not to forget your old friends when you are amongst so many new ones.”

“You may,” I said earnestly, touched by something in his voice, and recovering from my little huff in a moment. “I shall never forget my old friends, wherever I am. If I never see you again, Tom, nobody in all the world”—here I stopped, overwhelmed with horror at what I was going to say.

“Finish it,” he urged, drawing himself up to my knee, and looking eagerly in my face—an eagerness I felt rather than saw. “Nobody in all the world—what?”

“Nobody will make me forget my old friends in Australia,” I replied hastily. “Isn’t it going to rain, Tom? How dark it is getting! And we must have exceeded our five minutes long ago.”

“I wish you had finished that sentence,” he remarked quietly, getting up from the grass as I rose. “However, thank you for the beginning, Kitty. Yes; we’d better get back as quick as we can. I did not notice how it was clouding over. What a blessing rain would be!—but not to you in that thin frock. If it comes on, you must have my coat.”

We never, during all our intercourse, said so little to one another in a given time as during our walk home that night. I could not think of anything to talk about, and I suppose he would not; and yet the silence seemed to shout to us. It was so dark now, with heavy rain-clouds gathering up, that I was glad to take his offered hand, and be guided through the paddocks and fences that I knew so well. In old days we used to scramble over these latter together, and tear our clothes in company; but now he opened the gates and took down the slip panel, as if he had been escorting mother. When we approached the high hedges of the garden, he made a little pause; and our dogs came and sniffed at us, full of curiosity to know what was going to happen next.

“Kitty,” said he, “shall I come in and speak to them? Or would you rather say good night here?”

“Couldn’t you stay all night, Tom? It is going to be wet, and you have so far to walk.”

“Oh no, Kitty, certainly not; my people don’t know where I am. And a drop of rain would do one good this weather.”

“Then, perhaps—they are very much occupied to-night—perhaps we had better say good night now; and I shall go in the back way. Good night, Tom.”

My hand had lain all this time in the warm clasp of his; now I drew it away, without daring to wait for any more farewells. I ran in by the back door without looking behind me, and along the passages to the drawing-room. Here, or rather on the verandah outside, mother and father were talking still; and I went to bid them good night too, for I did not want to sit up any longer.

“It’s going to rain at last, daddy,” said I, by way of saying something.

“Yes, Kitty, thank God; it won’t hold off above five minutes longer. We shall get the tanks filled to-night, and you’ll see the grass beginning to grow before to-morrow night.”

And while I was undressing it came down in sheets—a way it has in this part of the world when it means to rain at all—beating straight into the verandah, through the veil of vine leaves, so that even poor Spring was driven from his door-mat, and I had to let him in and give him the hearthrug instead.

Oh, my dear love, how wet you must have got that night!

CHAPTER III.

PEARS AND GREENGAGES.

The next day was Saturday, and mother began to be restlessly busy—for her. She and father had decided that nothing could very well happen to the wool on its voyage to London, and that, even if the prices did fall in the market before it got there, we could not now give up our enterprise; and so the March mail was fixed upon as the date of our departure, and that was not more than six weeks off.

“It will be well to get home before the summer there sets in,” said she. “Kitty should see England in springtime first. Ah, Kitty, you don’t know what is in store for you!” And she began to remind father of the Aprils and Mays of their early married life in Norfolk, and to talk of hawthorn hedges and delicate leafage of green woods, of cowslips and primroses, cuckoos and nightingales, and so on, until they both got quite sentimental about it.

As soon as breakfast was over father went into his office and drew out his advertisement for the Melbourne papers, wherein he described Narraporwidgee in the glowing terms it deserved. So-and-so had been instructed by Harry Chamberlayne, Esq., to sell by auction, at their rooms, Collins Street West, on the —th of February, 187—, at half-past two o’clock p.m., the Narraporwidgee station, situated so and so, and consisting of so many thousand acres of freehold, and so many thousand acres of Crown land, so many sheep, cattle, horses, etc.; and when he had done describing these matters, and all the river frontages that he had, and all the miles of fencing he had put up, and how the paddocks that these enclosed were “unsurpassed for grazing capabilities,” he called in mother to help him to set forth with sufficient pomp the details of the home station—its many rooms and outbuildings, its stores and men’s huts, its tanks and wells, its superior woolshed and screw press, its stables and coach-houses, its gardens and orchards, and so on; and it took up the best part of mother’s morning.

But when this document was disposed of, she set to work at her own preparations with a zeal and energy that astonished me, used as I was to her quiet ways. She rummaged out drawers and cupboards, turned over and sorted her household stores, made long lists of things she had and things she wanted, and chatted away to me as I helped her with a subdued vivacity that was very pleasant to see.

“I am not going to get you any new dresses, Kitty,” she said, when my wardrobe was under consideration. “You have plenty for the voyage—the simpler they are the better for that purpose. It does not matter about wearing them out quickly; as soon as we reach London you shall have a complete outfit.” It made all seem so near and so sudden.

Saturday evening was fair and clear, with nothing to hinder the moon from shining in all her glory. The sky had not a cloud, and was sprinkled with pale stars, the Southern Cross hanging just over the biggest of the big Portugal laurels that father was so proud of. Already, as he had prophesied, there was a sprinkling of young grass blades all over everywhere from last night’s rain, though the earth had been looking for weeks as if it had been skinned, so quickly does nature recover herself in this wonderful climate. There was a fresh scent of growth and moisture in the soft air, which was cool and sweet as the airs of paradise. Yet I did not go for a walk. I had a sniff from the verandah, while we enjoyed our after-dinner cup of tea, and that was all. Spring went off into the shrubberies to indulge in the pleasures of the chase by himself; mother sat down to begin her English letters, though the mail did not go out for at least ten days; and daddy lit his pipe, and put his hands into the arm-holes of his waistcoat, and marched up and down the verandah in peaceful contemplation—conning his late literary effort, I suppose. I, in the most unromantic manner, made myself comfortable in the easiest armchair, surrounded myself with English papers and magazines, and diligently read tales and tragedies, real and fictitious, until it was time to go to bed.

This being Saturday, naturally the next day was Sunday; and that Sunday was one to be evermore marked in my calendar with the whitest of white stones. It was lovely in respect of weather, to begin with; not hot, and not grey or overcast; breezy and balmy, and peaceful and spring-like. Flowers were sprouting afresh; the distant hill-ranges had got a new tinge of colour on them from the fresh-springing verdure that was only a day old; the magpies chattered and gabbled about the garden more musically, I thought, than usual—as if they, too, had fallen upon a gala Sunday.

I opened my glass doors when I was half dressed, and stood on the threshold to brush my hair, the sweet air blowing through it as I did so. How often I have looked back to my little chamber at Narraporwidgee, when cooped up in English bedrooms, and thought of that friendly garden walking quite up to my door, the rose petals drifting in upon my table, the grapes hanging at my hand (that I used to gather and eat as I performed my toilet), the freshness of the morning all around me, and dear old Spring lightly trotting over the China matting, or lying in the doorway to watch all my performances. I hate “upstairs,” and always shall, if I live to be a hundred.

Never in my life did I make a Sunday toilet with so much care and deliberation. I was a good-looking girl enough, more especially as to figure and carriage, about which mother was much more particular than she was about my complexion, which, to be sure, had been well sunburnt; but I do myself only justice when I say I had never been vain of my appearance. I never was until now. But I am not sure that a little vanity did not come to life that Sunday morning when I stood so long at my looking-glass. I liked the look of my own face, which gazed at me with large, frank, thoughtful eyes; I liked the look of my own hair, soft, and shiny, and plentiful, and the colour of a pale chestnut, and the look of the large braids that showed their golden ridges just over the top of my head. I greatly admired my own costume, which I selected more because it was the one I liked best than because it was the best suited to a January morning. It was black silk, rich and plain, fitting me beautifully. A collar of Honiton lace and a soft ruffle adorned my throat, and wide lace was laid, cuff fashion, on the close sleeves, edged, too, with ruffles round my wrists. I give this particular description, because it was a part of the ceremonial of the great festival day of my life, and because it has been the type of costume that I have worn—to please somebody—ever since.

Mother looked at me approvingly when I came in to breakfast. The rich old lace had been hers, and she loved it; and she loved the style of that simple but costly gown. She was pleased whenever she saw what she considered signs of taste in her colonial girl, who in earlier days had been too fond of many colours.

“You needn’t hack that dress, dear,” she said, as she kissed me. “You can wear that quite well when you get home. Still, it is a cool morning and you look very nice; doesn’t she, daddy?”

“She always looks nice,” replied daddy, as he helped me to a chop; but that was more of a compliment than she bargained for.

Breakfast was a late meal on Sunday mornings, and as soon as breakfast was over it was time to get ready for church. Father went to order the horses, and to see them put in also, for like most Australian country gentlemen, he would have thought himself very remiss if he did not personally test his buckles and straps and the bolts of his buggy before starting with ladies over bush roads. Mother and I went to dress, which, with me, was a matter of hat and gloves, and then there was a grand gathering of the household. The waggonette was roomy, and took all the womankind on the station who wished to attend church—their respective churches, that is, for we had no female servant just now belonging to our own communion, except the laundress, who was laid up “very bad with the rheumatics”—all the fault of that “dreadful night” on Friday, the wicked old creature said—tempting Providence, I told her. Mother took her seat of honour by father’s side, and I, two house servants, and the overseer’s daughter, disposed ourselves behind, and I took care to sit by the door, where I could see the road behind us.

“All aboard?” shouted father impatiently. “Give ’em their heads, Joe.” Joe sprang back, and the horses, finding themselves free, wriggled for a second, gave two great bounds, and darted out of the yard and into the paddock as if they had wings to their heels.

When English people talk about good driving, with their perfectly broken-in horses, and their level, even roads, and all that elaboration of harness, I simply turn up my nose. Give a man a pair of bush horses like those two of ours, who that very Sunday had their collars on for the sixth or eighth time, and not a bit of a strap behind their slender girth-pads, and see how he would take them through trees and stumps, and ruts and holes, and creeks and gullies, and ten or fifteen gates. It was beautiful to see how father did it.

We lived nine miles away from the church, and we got there in less than an hour. The bell (which hung from a limb of a tall gum tree in the churchyard) was just beginning to ring, at the instance of a lank lad, who was also the superintendent of the Sunday-school; and the congregation was assembling at its leisure, after the manner of country congregations.

Mother went into the parsonage to see the clergyman’s young wife, who had just had her first baby; father drove into the little enclosure set apart for the safe keeping of buggies and horses during service time, took out his fiery pair and hung them up at the fence; and I sedately walked into church. The choir, to which I had the honour to belong, of course sat in the wrong place—close by the entrance door; and here I settled myself, as yet all alone in my glory, in the corner seat that belonged to me, to watch the people coming into church.

I had not watched long, and the little building was filling rapidly (the people being in the habit of hanging about outside to talk to one another till the last moment, and then all flocking in at once), when I heard the sound of light wheels and fast-trotting horses, and my heart began to beat in a hurry.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith came in first, the portly old man with his silver head, and the fine-featured, slender old lady, who was so like Mrs. Delany of a hundred years ago. She was quite unlike anybody I had ever seen. She never wore anything but old brocades and soft black satins, and scraps and lappets of old ivory-coloured lace, with a China crape shawl in summer and a thick black silk mantle or sable cape in winter. Beside the many-coloured fourth and fifth-rate fashionables who sat around her in church, she looked most queerly ancient and picturesque.

I used to wonder where she could have got her clothes from, until mother told me they were the carefully hoarded remnants of a mighty wardrobe that she had had when she was a belle of fashion at some foreign court. Mr. Smith was her second husband, whom she had married rather late in life, and, it was said, under very romantic circumstances. My Tom was their only son.

He came in five minutes after service had begun, for he had stayed behind to take out his horses, and he made his way at once to a vacant seat beside me, to my extreme content and embarrassment. He also was a member of the choir, and in our primitive congregation it did not matter how the voices were mixed up, provided enough of them were there. Anybody sat where anybody liked. We didn’t speak to one another, of course, as service was going on, and we didn’t want to speak. Two giggling young dressmakers’ apprentices sat behind us, whispering comments upon my dress and hat—very sharply on the look-out, I have no doubt, for any communication that might take place between us. He had forgotten his hymn-book, and had to look over mine; but, what with those girls behind us, and the lady who played the harmonium, as locum tenens for the clergyman’s wife, making a dreadful mess of it, I was enabled to sing loudly and steadily, and to comport myself generally with dignity and composure. But I must say I had a sensation of flurry within me that I was not by any means used to.

When the service was over, and we who had buggies were congregated around them, mother and father gave their regular Sunday invitation to Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which they regularly accepted, to lunch with us on their way home. Their way was the same as ours almost up to the garden gate, and then they had between six and seven miles (by the road) further to go. We always reached home at reasonable lunch time, and they could not; and each of the small households enjoyed the weekly intercourse with the other, so that it had become quite an institution. The invitation was offered and accepted just for polite form’s sake.

As we were getting into our respective buggies Tom suggested that I might as well go with them as sit alone behind (we had to pick up our servants as we went along). I looked at mother, who said, “Certainly, dear, if you wish,” and then climbed to the high box-seat by Tom’s side, quite careless how I wiped the wheels with my lustrous skirts, and we led the way out into the village street.

“I say, didn’t it pelt, Kitty, that night?” said Tom, presently, when I had exchanged some remarks with his parents, and we were sitting in silence, side by side. “It’s well you got in when you did.”

“Oh yes, Tom; and how I wished you had stayed with us! Did you not get awfully, dreadfully drenched?”

“Not a bit. That is, of course I got wet, but I’m not made of sugar. It takes more than that to affect me. I rather liked it. Will you have another walk to-night, Kitty? There will be no end of a moon after this fine day, and we needn’t go home till we like. Mother”—turning his face over his shoulder—“you can have a spell of gossip to-day, for there’ll be a lovely moon.”

“Oh, my dear, we mustn’t be late,” responded Mrs. Smith, earnestly. But Tom smiled at me, and showed no alarm at the threat. “Soon you won’t have Mrs. Chamberlayne to talk to,” said he; “you must remember that.”

When we reached home luncheon was ready, and we discussed it at great leisure, with much conversation, as was the rule on Sundays; for on that day it was dinner into the bargain. On this special occasion I would be afraid to say how long we were about it. I know it was nearly four o’clock before father rolled up his napkin and proposed an adjournment to the verandah for dessert. When we got out of the house, we cast about for freedom, Tom and I, and obtained it without any trouble.

“Kitty,” said father, “go into the orchard and see how those pears are getting on.”

“Pears, daddy!” replied I. “Why, of course they are as hard as nails, and will be for I don’t know how long.”

“Well, greengages, then—they’re ripe, aren’t they? Take a basket and see if you can find a dishful for tea. I always think”—turning to Mrs. Smith—“that fruit is never so nice as when freshly gathered off the tree and put on green leaves, as Kitty does it.”

“Come along, Kitty,” said Tom; “we’ll get a choice assortment of whatever’s going.”

Here poor mother, who foresaw that I might probably tear myself to rags, interfered to bid me go and change my dress first. This I did, with no loss of time; and then we two went away to the orchard, leaving our elders to sip their wine and gossip, and, I dare say, to become quite oblivious of our existence.

“I really think father wanted to get rid of us,” said I, as soon as we were out of earshot.

“I dare say he did, and very kind of him, I’m sure. I suppose they want to talk over all this going to England business. Are you still sorry you are going, Kitty?”

“For some things,” I replied.

“What things?”

I hesitated, and then said vaguely, “Lots of things.”

We reached the orchard, and sauntered silently to a remote shady corner, where, under a huge apple tree, stood a low rustic seat.

“Let’s sit down a bit, Kitty; it’s too soon after dinner for you to go rampaging about, making yourself hot. They don’t want the fruit till tea-time, and that won’t be for hours yet.”

“And I don’t believe the greengages are ripe any more than the pears,” I said; “we have not had one yet. There might be a few raspberries and some apricots left.”

“Well, we’ll see presently. It is so jolly sitting here all by ourselves. You don’t know how I have been longing to see you again, ever since Friday night, when you ran away from me without saying good-bye.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did. It was my lucky star brought you down to the river on Friday night, Kitty.”

“You might have got rheumatic fever, and been a cripple all your days, or died,” I responded gravely. “People do sometimes, when they get such a drenching as you must have had.”

“Not when they are as strong and sound as I am, and if they have sense enough to take their wet clothes off at once and have a stiff glass of brandy and water. Indeed, I think it did me all the good in the world; I wanted a little cooling down.”

I had no comment to offer upon that speech, except a rising colour in my face that I would have given much to have had cooled down. So Tom went on. “Tell me some of the things that make you wish you were not going to England, Kitty.”

“Many things—nothing in particular, I suppose.”

“There are things you don’t want to leave?”

“Yes.”

“And people?”

“Yes.”

“Whom will you miss most? You are not intimate with many people, Kitty. You have very few friends indeed, for a girl of your age.”

“Yes, very few. I don’t think I like girls.”

He was silent a minute, looking at me, and then he said, “Are there many people you will miss more than me?”

“No,” I answered nervously; “how could there be, when there are only a few altogether? Don’t go on catechizing, Tom; talk of something. Tell me about England.”

“Any one?” he persisted, now looking very grave and eager, and leaning his arm on his knee to see more clearly into my face.

I had to tell the truth. I looked up at a green apple hanging before me, staring with misty eyes, as if I were having my photograph taken. I replied as steadily as I could, “Not any one that I know of.”

“One question more, Kitty, and you’ll bless my impudence for asking it, I dare say, but I won’t bother you any more. Are you sorry you are going, because of leaving me?”

I did not bless his impudence. I looked into his dear, handsome, eager face, and thought of all that leaving him would cost me, and how blank and empty England would be, if there were untold millions of men in it; and—I am ashamed to say it, though I could not help it any more than I could help being dumb to express my sentiments in any other way—I put my hands to my face and began to cry. I need not say what happened after that. In an instant hands and face were hidden in his breast, and his own strong hands were clasped closely over them. It was only what I might have expected.

“My love! My pretty Kitty! Bless you, my darling!” he exclaimed in a strong passion of emotion that went over me like a tidal wave; and he kissed the top of my head in a way that made my very toes tingle. “Why need we be separated, my own dear love? If you want me I will come—or I will wait and come—or I will keep you back. Somehow—some way—I will manage that we shall not lose one another. Do you want me, Kitty?”

“Do you want me?” I whispered, lifting my head a little, without drawing it away. “That is the question.”

“Haven’t I shown you that? Why, before I went away, when you were ever such a little thing, all the time I was at Oxford, every day since I came home—dreadfully ever since I came home—I have wanted you. You would have broken my heart on Friday night with that news you brought me, only somehow—you won’t mind my saying so now, Kitty?—somehow I had a feeling that it would all come right.”

“I oughtn’t to have let you feel so, Tom.”

“Yes; you couldn’t help it. And now it has come right I’m the happiest dog in the wide world. Aren’t you happy yourself, now?”

“I am, I am!” I replied heartily (for why should I have tried to hide it?); and I put up one timid and hand laid it on his shoulder. And then he clasped me close, and we took a long, long, long kiss, with scorching faces and loud-beating hearts. And we never thought anything more about pears and greengages until the tea-bell rang, and it was too late even to think of looking for them.

CHAPTER IV.

ARCADIA.

“What shall we do now, Kitty?” said Tom, as we hastened through the orchard, hand in hand, with our empty basket. “Shall I call your father away after tea and speak to him? Or shall we keep the rest of this one day for ourselves, and have a walk to the river in the moonlight? Do you think it would be wrong to have a clandestine engagement, just under their noses, until to-morrow?”

“I don’t think so,” I replied emphatically. “It would be much the nicest.”

“Much—there’s no doubt about that. And, after all, nobody can tell what may happen after to-day. Suppose he won’t give his consent, Kitty?”

“He’s too kind,” I said promptly. “And he can’t bear to see me miserable.”

“Not even for your good?”

“No, not even for my good. Mother would make me miserable for my good, though she would be a deal worse herself all the time; she has the will and the courage, somehow. But poor dear daddy breaks down the moment he sees me even getting ready to cry. I’m more afraid of mother than I am of him. But oh, Tom, what is there to be afraid of? What could any one see in you to object to?”

We were by this time in the back passage, and, doors being closed, stopped to exchange another kiss; and then we sneaked into the dining-room, one after the other, reversing the order of precedence in consideration of my nerves.

“Hullo, Kitty,” said father, looking round the table, which was garnished with a veal pie and some chicken salad, “where are the plums gone to?”

“There are none ripe, daddy,” faltered I.

“And couldn’t you find any substitute? You might have picked a dish of apricots, at any rate. It doesn’t seem natural to have tea on Sundays without fruit of some sort.”

“I don’t think there are any apricots left,” I suggested, beginning to be uncomfortably conscious that mother was regarding me gravely from the corner of her eye.

“None left?” father almost shouted. “Why, didn’t you see Sandy, only yesterday, carrying off a wheelbarrow load for the pigs?”

I hung my head, and mother came to the rescue. “The rain spoiled them,” she put in quietly. I was certain, from the tone of her voice, that she scented the truth, though, perhaps, afar off; and I quaked inwardly.

As soon as tea was over, I slipped out of the room and into my bedroom, whence I emerged from my private door into the garden, and ran away to the paddock. In about ten minutes I spied Tom poking about the shrubbery, looking for me; and I called “Cooee!” once or twice, softly, to bring him to my hiding-place.

“I wondered where in the world you were off to,” he said in some surprise.

“I’ll tell you why I ran away,” I eagerly responded. “I felt certain mother would ask me to sing, or to do something that would keep me indoors; and I could not bear to lose this one evening of our own.”

“No, indeed; that would have been hard lines, and no mistake! Ah, well, we’ll soon settle with them, and get our liberty honestly, please God.”

“We’re not dishonest, Tom, I hope.”

“No, my darling, no; but you know what I mean.”

I did know what he meant, of course. And I slipped my hand in his and we set off across the moonlit grass, with Spring bounding wildly after us. I dare say there were plenty more lovers in the world as happy as we, but we did not think so.

We made our way to the very bend of the river where I met him on Friday night, and sat down on the very identical stump. That is to say, I sat down on it, and he sat as close to me as circumstances permitted, in a very comfortable, if slightly ungraceful attitude. There were some wild ducks dotting the moonlight in the deep pool above us—if it had been a week-night they never would have swum about in that confidential way; and a pair of ridiculous laughing jackasses sat over our heads and jeered at us.

“Oh, Kitty, Kitty, how many nights like this shall we have, I wonder, out of six weeks of nights! What a dreadful little time it is!”

“Hush now, Tom. Don’t let us talk of anything but what is nice and pleasant. The other things can wait.”

“All right, we won’t. Kitty, when we are married, you must always wear black gowns with white lace on them, like that one you had on this morning.”

“Did you like it?”

“I should think so, rather. I never saw you in anything that suited you so well.”

“And it happens to be the dress that I like best. But oh, Tom, I should cost a fortune if I wore that sort of thing always? You can’t think how unlucky I am with my clothes, and how soon I make them shabby. I have a knack of catching on all the nails and knobs and things that stick out, somehow.”

“Well, we can have a change sometimes, of course; but that is what you must wear whenever you want to be particularly swell.”

“I’m quite agreeable. Only you must make me a rather considerable allowance, I must tell you.”

“No, I don’t believe in allowances. I shall give you a cheque-book of your own, and you shall draw whatever you want, without being beholden to anybody. There should be no bargaining between husband and wife.”

“If husbands did like that, Tom, I’m afraid the wives would get dreadfully demoralized. Why, I can’t add up money at all—I don’t know why, but I never could—and I should very likely ruin you without knowing it.”

“How jolly it will be!” murmured Tom, meditatively.

“Being ruined?”

“No, being a husband, and having a wife. I suppose I shall come to England for you and we shall be married there. Mind now, Kitty, lots of men will want to make love to you when you get home and into society. Don’t you let them, there’s a good girl.”

“It doesn’t matter what they do, I suppose, if I don’t make love to them.”

“Doesn’t it, though, by Jove! when I’m not there to send them about their business! Do you know, I’m sorry you haven’t been out and got all that over. I should like to feel you had chosen me out of the whole world, as I have chosen you.”

“And pray haven’t I? We’ll wait, if you like, and not be engaged until I have gone through two or three London seasons—if mother lets me have London seasons, that is. I am quite ready.”

“No, you’re not, Kitty; and you know that is nonsense. But oh, how long the time will be till I can come after you!”

“To keep me out of mischief—as you said the other night.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yes, you did—though not in so many words, perhaps. Now, don’t be a suspicious, jealous, disagreeable boy. If you can’t trust me out of sight, I’m not worth having. And I promise you faithfully, Tom—I’m not afraid to take any ‘solemn davy’ you like—that a hundred thousand million men won’t make any more difference in my love for you than if they weren’t there.”

Tom wriggled a little closer, and laid his head upon my shoulder; and Spring, for the first time catching sight of ducks, sent them with a sudden splash whirring up through the moonlight over our heads. We neither of us spoke for a little while, but held one another close, and sealed that sacred compact with a long and solemn kiss. We suddenly seemed to feel it a sort of sacrilege to talk. We looked up together at the delicate sky and the pale stars, the tip of his auburn moustache brushing my cheek the while, and watched the flight of the wild-fowl until they were out of sight—one after another, all in line, like the ducks in Landseer’s “Sanctuary,” their black necks stretched out, and their active little pinions twinkling. It was a sweeter night than Friday night had been. The river was not low and stagnant now, with dry mud-banks, but rippling and brawling over its stones and snags, almost to our feet, fed anew with a freshet coming down from the Booloomooroo Ranges, where we had seen it raining in the afternoon. There were faint tints of dying daylight tingeing the moonshine that lay around us; and there were soft airs, fragrant with the scent of the refreshed earth and the springing grass, just breathing into our faces like the breath of life itself. No such airs ever blow in England, I think. Even the gum trees, ugly as they were—so far as Nature’s works can be ugly—were transfigured in this light, rustling their scraggy and shadeless branches softly, and throwing patterns on my white gown.

I was the first to break the spell of happy silence in which we sat. “Tom,” I said, “when will you come to England for me?”

“As soon as I can, my darling; you may be sure of that. I must talk to my father about it, and hear what Mr. Chamberlayne says.”

“Can’t you persuade Mr. Smith to sell out, as father is doing, and settle in England, too?”

“I don’t think there is any chance of that. You see, my mother is not like yours; she hates England, and wouldn’t go back there for anything.”

“What an odd thing! And yet she never seems to have belonged to the colony a bit.”

“No more she does. But something—some dreadful trouble, I think—happened to her at home. I don’t know what it was; it was long ago—when she was married before; or, at any rate, before she married my father. I know the governor came out and invested everything they both had in the colony, to please her. Moreover, she has chosen the place where she wants to be buried—in that open space in the clump of wattles at the bottom of the garden. She is going to have an iron railing put round it; she drew the design herself. That looks as if she had made up her mind never to go away again.”

“And she never told you what happened to make her exile herself in that way?”

“Never: she has plenty to say about most things, as you know; but if you once approach an allusion to her early life she is as mum as anything—shuts up like a box. Do you remember that mysterious party in Lady Georgiana Fullerton’s novel ‘Too Strange not to be True?’ I often think she is like her.”

“But of course your father knows all about it.”

“Oh yes, of course he knows. But he never lets anything out any more than she does. I have been a little inquisitive sometimes, and asked him questions; but it always worried him awfully, poor old boy, so I gave it up. But I’m quite sure that here they will both stay—as long as she lives, at any rate.”

“Then what will you do, Tom?”—very sorrowfully. “You are their only child, and it would break their hearts to part with you.”

“Yes, I must not leave them for long. I must just run home to get married, and bring you back with me, Kitty. I hope it won’t be very hard on you, dear. We’ll have a house in Melbourne for part of the year, if you like; I won’t keep you always in the bush. And when the poor old people are gone, then we’ll live in any part of the world you like best. I don’t care a pin for the colony except for their sakes.”

“And I don’t care a pin where I live,” I responded, “so long as we are together.”

So we talked and talked, until it suddenly occurred to us that Mr. and Mrs. Smith might be wanting to go home, and would have no idea where their young coachman was gone to. Then we scrambled from our nest in the green bank, called Spring, who had forgotten it was Sunday, from his very secular engagements, and set off, hand in hand, through our Champs Elysées—oh, so loth to be convinced that our happy day was so nearly at an end!

When we reached home, we saw the Smith’s buggy with the hood up, standing ready in the stable yard, and Joe at the horses’ heads. In the drawing-room our elders, with the exception of Mrs. Smith, were standing about; and she was sitting on a sofa, in her old poke bonnet and her lovely old Indian shawl, with gloved hands folded before her, looking as if she might have been waiting any number of hours.

“I hope I am not behind time,” began Tom (he would no more have put his mother to inconvenience than he would the Queen, if he could help it). “I thought you would want a good long talk with Mrs. Chamberlayne, as there are so few Sundays left.”

My mother, who had evidently been on the watch for my approach, laid her hand upon my shoulder, and said gravely, “My dear, where have you been? I greatly dislike your running about in this way so late at night.”

“Don’t blame Kitty,” put in Tom, turning quickly to defend me; “it was my fault, Mrs. Chamberlayne. The night was so lovely that I persuaded her to come out for a walk.” And then I suppose he thought it was time to “settle with them,” as he called it; for he drew father a little aside, and asked him if he would be disengaged any time the following day, as he wanted particularly to speak to him.

“Certainly, certainly, my dear boy,” replied father, in blissful ignorance. “Any time after lunch that you like. You’d better come to lunch, eh?”

“I’ll come at three o’clock, or thereabouts,” said Tom, “if that will be convenient to you.”

And then they all went out to the buggy, father leading the way with Mrs. Smith, and mother monopolizing both the remaining men. I trailed after them at a respectful distance, waiting for an opportunity to say good night.

With the reins in one hand, Tom turned back and held out the other to me, before mounting into his seat. “Good night, Kitty,” he said aloud; and then, stooping his tall head, he whispered hurriedly, “Look out for me when I leave the presence-chamber to-morrow.”

“No fear,” I replied promptly. And I was very thankful, as soon as I had made use of that vulgar expression, that mother had not been near enough to hear it. My feelings were too strong for me, and it slipped out unawares.

CHAPTER V.

DESPAIR.

Mother had a suspicion of what was going on, but she held her tongue and made no sign. She kissed me as usual when I went to bed, and when I got up in the morning, and then went about her preparations as busily as before. Father was silent and preoccupied, and extremely affectionate and gentle to me, and his manner led me to believe that she had given him an idea of what Tom was probably coming for, and that he was thinking about it. But I dared not say or do anything to provoke him to disclose his thoughts.

Luncheon was late to-day for some reason, and we did not rise from table until nearly three o’clock. As soon as I could escape, I went to my own room and locked the door, and tried to straighten my somewhat untidy drawers and cupboards, while I impatiently waited to know my fate. I heard Tom open and shut the gate, and heard his long stride over the gravel, his leap up the verandah steps, and his peculiar authoritative knock at the front door. I heard Bridget ask him into the drawing-room; I heard father go in after him and close the door; and, two minutes later, mother’s dress rustled up the hall, and she, too, followed them, and softly shut herself in. I left the door of my wardrobe open, with all manner of garments tumbling off the shelves; and I flung myself on my knees by the bedside, and prayed that things might be permitted to go well for us—by which I meant, of course, the way we wanted them to go.

I stayed on my knees I can’t tell how long, after my prayer was done, listening; and I heard no sound. Then I got up, washed my face and hands, and raged round and round the room, making handcuffs of the towel. Then I stole into the passage; then I stole back again; and then I snatched up my hat, and ran out through the garden into the paddock, where I took up my post under an overhanging acacia hedge to wait for my lover’s coming. I sat here so long that I was afraid I had missed him, which dreadful thought prompted me to run back, post haste, to the house. Meeting Bridget in a passage, I breathlessly inquired if Mr. Smith was gone; and Bridget smirked in a confidential manner, and said, “No, miss, not yet.” Whereupon I again shut myself into my bedroom, with the door ajar, and felt that if this sort of thing went on much longer I should have to invade the presence-chamber myself.

At last mother came out, and, by the sound of her dress, I knew she was approaching my citadel. I held my breath while she paused and tapped at the door. “Kitty, my dear, are you here?”

I flung out of the room then, and threw myself into her arms. “Oh, mother, mother, tell me! What does father say?” I cried, with almost hysterical excitement. “Is it all right for Tom and me?”

“Tom has asked to be allowed to tell you about it himself,” she replied gently, but with a tremor in her voice. “You may go to him, Kitty; he is in the drawing-room, waiting for you. I can trust you both.”

“Trust us!” I echoed, puzzled at the bare idea of such a thing.

“My dear,” mother went on, very earnestly and lovingly, with an appealing look in her soft eyes, “if you don’t find things quite as you wish, you must remember that your father and I have done what is best for you. We know what is good for you better than you can know yourself.” A vague chill struck me as she spoke, and I begged her to tell me, in plain words, what had been settled.

“No; go and talk to Tom,” she said; “he will explain everything. I will give you half an hour to yourselves.”

I broke away from her at once, and ran to the drawing-room, and shut the door after me. Tom was standing with his back to a table, and supporting himself on it, with his hands behind him, gazing out of the window with such a sad and thoughtful look in his face as I had never seen before. He turned when he heard me, and I ran into his arms and laid my head on his shoulder, passionately determined that nothing should ever part us, if I could help it.

“Well, Kitty,” he said, stroking my hair, “we have half an hour of our own. Let us make the most of it, for it is the last we shall get.”

“What has happened? What have they done?” I cried piteously.

“They have driven a hard bargain with us, dear; but we must submit to it, as it is for your sake. We are not to be engaged, Kitty, for a couple of years at the least, until you have been ‘out,’ and have seen the world a little. Your father thinks you have taken to me because there was no one else, perhaps, and that you are too young to know your own mind.”

“Oh, what nonsense! Why didn’t you tell them different, Tom?”

“My love, I did all I could to keep you, you may be quite sure. But fathers and mothers are hard to deal with in these matters. I couldn’t talk them over; they had made up their minds.”

Tears began to fill my eyes—tears of indignation, as well as of bitter disappointment and grief. “But they didn’t say we were never to have one another, did they?” I inquired, searching for a ray of hope.

“No, Kitty, thank goodness! They had no objection to me personally——”

“I should think not, indeed! I don’t know what they want, if you’re not good enough—the Prince of Wales, perhaps.”

“The Prince of Wales is married already, Kitty; and I don’t think he would make you a better husband than I should, if he weren’t. No, I may have my chance, like any other man, only I must wait all this awful long time for it. How I shall do it, goodness only knows!”

“You may come home in two years, then, and we may be properly engaged?”

“Yes; if you are in the same mind, Kitty, and have not forgotten my existence. No fear of my not coming to claim the only privilege I could get out of them.”

“But, don’t you see, Tom, it comes to much the same thing after all. Fortunately, we understood one another before they knew anything about it, and we can’t undo that. We are engaged between ourselves, and we know in our own hearts that we could never give one another up. Of course we can submit quietly—outwardly, you know. Indeed, we have no choice in the matter, it appears; we must submit. I need not wear any ring, and I wouldn’t talk about you, or anything of that sort; but we can write to one another, and that will be a comfort. I will buy a quantity of the thinnest foreign paper that is made, and the finest steel pens, and keep a sort of diary for you of everything that happens, to post every mail; and you can do the same.”

“But, Kitty——”

“Oh, Tom, don’t let us mind! It would have been worse if you had gone to father first, and he had forbidden you to propose to me. We must have been quite parted then, for, of course, I couldn’t have written to you. But now the mail every month will be something to look forward to, though the months will seem like years. And we shall always have the feeling of knowing that we belong to each other, whatever happens.” Tom sat down on a sofa near us, and drew me into his arms. There was a solemnity in the way he did it that made me stop talking.

“My darling,” he said, sorrowfully, smoothing my hair in that tender way he had, “you don’t know the worst of it. They have put me upon my honour not to bind you in any way.”

“I bind myself,” I replied shortly.

“I’m not to allow you to be engaged, in any sense, Kitty.”

“But if I choose to consider myself so, that is my own business.”

“Well, I only hope that you will consider yourself so, and keep yourself for me. That is all I shall have to live on, Kitty, remember that. But in the mean time—in the mean time we have to do just exactly as if we were utter strangers.”

“You don’t mean we are not to write?”

“Yes, I do. I begged and prayed for half an hour, I should think, that we might be allowed to write sometimes, but your mother was more inexorable about that than about anything else. She said—and quite truly, of course—that it would be an admission of an engagement between us, and hinder you from having perfect freedom.”

“What do I want with perfect freedom? What does mother know about it, dictating to us like that? Why are we to be treated so—as if we were two babies?” I cried, in a passion of anger and grief. “You had no business to give in to her, Tom. If you really wanted to keep me you ought to have stood out against such tyranny.”

There was an ominous pause, during which I repented myself of this outburst. “Kitty,” he said at last, in a grave, shocked voice that chilled my heart, “that is the hardest thing I have had to bear to-day.”

“I did not mean to say it, Tom; I did not think before I spoke! I know you did your best for us both,” I sobbed, dreadfully sorry to have hurt him, and beginning to feel quite broken down under such an accumulation of misfortunes. “Oh, Tom, what shall we do? what shall we do? How shall I live for two years without knowing whether you are alive or dead even?” Two years at my time of life was tantamount to for ever.

“You shall know that, at any rate,” he replied, rousing himself to comfort me. “And the time will not be so long as you think, especially as it will be so filled up in England. We shan’t be grey-haired or decrepid when we meet again. After all, you won’t be twenty-one.”

I went on crying in silence; I could not stop yet now I had fairly begun. Tom laid my head on his breast, and laid his cheek on my head, and then let me alone for a while that I might have it out. Presently he said, “What’s the day of the month, Kitty?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” I whined dismally.

“Well, I’ll tell you; it’s my birthday. All this business put it out of my head, and I forgot to mention it before. It is my twenty-fourth birthday. Now, cheer up, dear, and listen to me. On this day two years—the day I am twenty-six—I’ll meet you in England, wherever you are. When you get up in the morning, you may feel sure you will meet me somewhere before night.”

“Oh, Tom, what a happy day! but it will never, never come. I might be dead—we might both be dead—before that.”

“Don’t talk of such dreadful things, child; don’t make matters worse than they are. Let us trust one another, and trust in God to keep us safely till we meet again. Let us look forward to that day, Kitty. Nothing shall hinder me from coming to you, unless my father or mother should be ill, or anything should happen, of course, which it would be quite impossible to help. Only sheer force shall keep me from you, after the time when our two years are up.”

“But if you should be kept, Tom?”

“I shall provide for that possible, though most improbable, contingency, by writing to you beforehand, under cover to your father, and asking him to give you the letter at night, if I have not turned up during the day. He has trusted me, and I can trust him.”

Here our conversation was interrupted by a knock at the door, and it struck us simultaneously that we must have much exceeded our half-hour.

“Yes?” interrogated Tom loudly.

“I want you, Kitty,” replied mother’s low, clear voice; and we rose from the sofa together, and stood clasped in each other’s arms.

“God bless you, my own dear love,” he whispered, as I received his parting kiss in floods of tears. “Remember, you are no longer bound to me, except by your love.”

“I shall be bound by that always, Tom; and you must never believe anything else, whatever people may tell you. Come for me on your birthday, and you will find me ready for you.”

“I will—I will! And now I must go, darling—I will go out by the verandah, for I can’t see anybody else just now. Apologize to your mother for me.”

“And what about to-morrow, Tom, and next day, and all the time till we go?”

“We shall meet sometimes, I suppose, Kitty, but we must not have any walks by ourselves any more.”

Mother’s knock came again, more peremptory than before, and we had to tear ourselves apart. Tom got his hat and went out by the window, a sadder man than he had been when he came, poor fellow; and I opened the door and flounced past mother, with flashing eyes and my nose in the air, and, regaining the shelter of my own chamber, flung myself on my bed, and cried as if my heart would break.

CHAPTER VI.

TOM SMITH’S FAMILY DIAMONDS.

I have often felt very sorry, and very much ashamed of myself, when I have thought of the way I treated my father and mother—particularly mother—at this time. I seldom spoke to either of them; and when I did, without being exactly impertinent, I contrived to frame my remarks in as unpleasant a form as possible, so that they might get no satisfaction out of them. I showed them no tender observances, beyond the regulation kiss morning and night, into which I infused as much indifference and formality as I decently could. I sat at table during meals with my head poised proudly in the air, and studiously refrained from smiling when father made his little jokes, and from gratifying mother by the slightest appearance of interest when she chattered of her English preparations and plans. I was too proud to be pettish, and tell her that I wished, as Caddy Jellaby did about America, that England was dead, which would have expressed my sentiments clearly in a simple form; but by a disparaging silence, or an implied disbelief in the infallible accuracy of her memory, or an ostentatious display of colonial prejudices, I did what in me lay, with considerable ingenuity, to take the flavour out of all her pleasant anticipations. They knew what it meant as well as I did, and they bore it with a patient gentleness that I do not now like to think of. Only when my ill-temper betrayed me into ill-manners, mother brought me to my senses with her customary directness; but they took all my covert slights with such a delicate forbearance that they would not even let me see that they noticed them. What hurt them most, I am sure, was my refusal to be talked to and reasoned with respecting the condition of my love affairs. Mother made several efforts to open the subject, and I always stubbornly declined to respond to them. I made her see that I expected no true sympathy from parents who could treat their only child in such a cruel fashion; and that since it would be impossible to understand one another’s feelings, the fewer confidences we indulged in the better. When she gave me work to do, I did not sew with her in our little morning-room as usual, but carried my basket and materials into my bedroom, and locked myself in to do it there. When either of them asked me to play to them after dinner, I went at once to the piano, and plodded through all my pieces as they came till they told me to stop, as if they were so many five-finger exercises. I was dearly fond of music, and I played well, with a poetic appreciation of the subtleties of sweet sounds; but now I carefully eliminated every trace of feeling or sympathy from the tender passages that my répertoire was full of, and laid no more emphasis or expression upon them than if I were a machine. I petted and fondled Spring with absurd extravagance, until the poor dog’s head was quite turned—letting him paw me over as he liked, and lick my face, and grovel on the skirts of my best dresses—by way of giving my parents to understand that, if no one else cared about me, here, at least, I had one true friend.

Poor father and mother! If they had done their duty in the matter, as I feel sure was the case, they had to be satisfied with virtue for its own reward. It was all the reward they got. For, besides this difference amongst ourselves, there sprang up a coolness with Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Of course these old people considered (and a perfect right they had to do so) that there was no one in the world to compare with their son; and, of course, they felt it a great indignity that my parents had not shown themselves overwhelmed with delight at getting the chance of such a husband for a little chit like me. They were both too well-bred to express this sentiment, either by speech or manner; but they entertained it cordially all the same.

The first outward change occurred on Sunday, when we all met at church again, after that long, empty, wretched week. The Smiths arrived there first on this occasion; the old people were in their places, and Tom, of course, was in the choir. When I saw him there, on entering the porch at mother’s heels (and our eyes met at once in an intense and solemn look of welcome), I took a sudden resolution to follow my parents up the aisle, and seat myself demurely in the family pew beside them. I was quite sure they did not wish me to leave the choir because Tom was there; on the contrary, it would be very repugnant to mother’s delicacy to make such a public demonstration. But it was highly gratifying to me to show them that I supposed, as a matter of course, that I was to keep as far away from him as space permitted. It made them look like tyrants, and me like an interesting martyr, to the whole Smith family, if to no one else; and of course the villagers found a topic for gossip and speculation in such a mysterious departure from our established habits. When we went out to the buggies, father shook hands with Tom cordially, and with his old friends, and then, with visible embarrassment, but ostentatious warmth, he offered the stereotyped invitation to Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

The old lady, with her little figure, and her delicate face that was like a carving in ivory, received it with the gentle dignity of a dowager empress. “Not to-day, I thank you, Mr. Chamberlayne,” she replied. “We have allowed so many of the servants to have a Sunday out to-day that we are wanted at home to keep house.”

Of course it was a polite excuse, and father knew it. Mother would have accepted it, and said no more, but he could not help blundering on, even to the extent of mentioning Tom by name as included in the invitation. Of course he got nothing by it except a distressed feeling that things were somehow all wrong. “I want to have a talk with you,” he urged, in quite a pleading tone; “I have been looking forward to to-day to talk matters all over.”

“Another time, Mr. Chamberlayne, another time,” she replied, with a touch of asperity in her polite, high-pitched tones. She made it evident to him, at last, that she did not intend to accept his hospitality, as heretofore; and he left off pressing her.

Tom, during this time, had been quietly harnessing his horses; and now he handed his mother into her seat, saw his father tucked up beside her, mounted the box, and gathered his reins together. “Good morning, Mrs. Chamberlayne; good-bye, Kitty,” he called in a quiet, clear voice as he raised his hat to us. “Mr. Chamberlayne, I will leave the gates open for you.” And away they drove, and were soon out of sight.