“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.