“Now, children, you must hurry home and help your mother.”
“Oh! do ‘wind’ us up,” requested Joy. It would have been much quicker to have carried each up on his back, but he made a large loop at one end of the rope, climbed up, and attached the other end to the windlass. Then, Hope put Joy first—being the younger—into the loop, tucked her clothes under her, and the father slowly ‘wound’ her up. As he landed each twin, he looked into her eyes and said, “Daddy’s girl,” and each daddy’s girl bored her curly head into his chest, as evidence of her affection. Those two were doubly dear to their parents; for some time previously when that scourge, diphtheria, swept through the district, it carried their little brother in its train, and for many anxious days the parents were afraid that the twins would follow, and they were so like their mother. With the assistance of the rope, Hope soon appeared.
“Now, not a word to your mother until dinner time. Come and call me, and bring the barrow and two sugar bags for the wash dirt in the bucket.”
Here in parentheses we state: (Although the false bottom ran for some distance along the lead, the rest of the wash was scarcely worth sluicing.) B.B. had unconsciously driven in the board just over a rich pocket. Still there was gold enough to buy a grazing farm on the rich volcanic land, and when the rains came in February and March, with B.B’s. assistance, the accumulated wash was sluiced, and the returns provided funds to purchase stock. B.B. would not accept wages, but the lease of the dam was transferred to him, and he had the use of the races and sluice boxes; but he would pay rent for the cottage, so every fortnight he called at the farm, and placed two shillings on the kitchen table.
The last time I heard from there, the family were living in comfort, and B.B.—well, he was the same old B.B. Now we must return.
There was one member of this family who never forgot that Christmas morning, who laid and watched the daylight break over the eastern mountains, and listened to the magpies welcoming the coming day. Gradually the sun appeared, his shading beams turning every dewdrop on leaf and fern into a matchless gem. Even the unsightly “mullock” heaps shared in the splendour, and reflected hues of purple and of gold as if kind nature, forgiving man’s wantoness, were endeavouring to “cover transgressions with love,” and as the children, in tune with the Angelic Choir on this glad Christmas morning, chanted
“Hark! the Herald Angels sing,
Glad tidings of our New-Born King.”
it found an echo in each grateful heart, but with a sweeter melody in the mothereplace with, as she realised that the struggle to provide for her little brood was at an end. And I trust the reader and the writer will hear that same glad song, and each heart will echo the message,
“On earth peace, goodwill to men.”