“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.