Chapter II: Part 2

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

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

She asked shakingly what she had done.

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER IV*

*The Painting of The Ship*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Hermie would write back sadly:

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

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

And Cameron answered:

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

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

She wrote at last:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Hurrah for daddie the artist!' he shouted.

'Hurrah!' cried Hermie.

''Rah!' shrilled Roly.

Floss claimed a kiss.

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

And thus was the painting of the ship begun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miss Browne made a hysterical noise in her throat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER V*

*Dunks' Selection*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But now he was completely at sea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cameron thought of his children and braced himself up.

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

'But--but----' the woman began again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

'An' me,' said Floss.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Roly gloated over the thought.

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

Cameron wiped his brow.

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

But Bart looked doubtful.

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

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

When he convicted himself of the wandering he groaned aloud.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But he pushed her aside.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But to burn it!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER VI*

*Thirty Thousand a Year*

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

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

Bart looked at it critically.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But Bart was learning the art of managing his father.

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

So they went up to the little patchwork house together.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bart wrote down the figures two hundred and forty.

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

'Say one hundred and fifty,' Bart said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

'A hundred and fifty pounds,' she said.

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

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

Hermie was quite willing to be cautious.

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

Miss Browne's pencil worked.

'Four thousand eight hundred,' she said.

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

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

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

Bart still had misgivings.

'More might die than that,' he said.

Hermie was quite pale with excitement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'But the feed-bill?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER VII*

*Come Home! Come Home*

.

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

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

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

Five years, and not one idle day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hermie grew a little pale.

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

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

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

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

'Child, child!' he said.

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

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

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