“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.”