'Well, I'll do my best, only the moment you see him you'll say——'
'Oh, here you are, both gossiping away nineteen to the dozen! Well, Baby, are you tired from your journey yesterday? After all, you are really quite grown up.'
It was Hector Courtland who made this little speech, standing in the doorway of the drawing-room, where his wife and sister were seated, with Lionel, the eldest boy, just then an invalid, on a couch, buried in the enchanted pages of the 'Arabian Nights.' Courtland was a tall spare man, with that slight stoop which tall men, who are in the saddle often ten hours out of the twenty-four, are apt to acquire. He was bronzed with the sun and constant exposure to all sorts of weather. He was barely forty, but his dark-brown hair, beard, and moustache were plentifully sprinkled with gray. His face, when in repose, was grave almost to sadness, and he would often pass hours without uttering a word. These are some of the characteristics of a life passed in the Bush from early manhood. Courtland had been at Eton three years, when sudden and disastrous reverses, coupled with failing health, led his father to decide on leaving England for Australia. No one who knew Hector Courtland when he left Eton—a lad of seventeen—would have prognosticated that he would become grave, silent, and uumirthful long before he reached the uplands of middle age. But there are probably few natures which are not profoundly modified by a semi-Carthusian existence during the most susceptible years of life.
'You look tired, Hector. Wouldn't you like a cup of tea?' said his wife.
'Yes, a quart potful. Some sheep got boxed up at the seven-mile hut, and we had a high old time of it drafting them. Well, Liny, what are you doing, young man?'
'Reading about Sindbad the Sailor, father. Do you know that Aunt Stella can tell stories just like a book?'
'No; I never heard her. What sort of stories?'
'The one she told me this morning was about strange people who live always in the woods.'
'What kind of people, my boy?'
'Well, when they are in the sunshine they are all light. When they are in the moonshine, it goes through them, so you must step very gently, and follow them till they get into the shadow; and when they are in shadow, you cannot tell them from the darkness.'