“Yes, I am a real bush girl,” she smiled, “but I’ve been in Sydney for the last four years, teaching at College. I just used to long for the bush, and the horses and the rides, and the wide, free, open spaces, and solitude when you wanted it, and to get up early and watch the sun rise, and then to watch the stars twinkle into space, and then just to gaze and gaze at the sky until there seemed nothing else in the world but yourself and the starshine.”
“Really, it was wonderful,” the children declared, “to think that a nice girl who knew all about the bush and who knew pet lambs and could ride had come to teach them, and to think that they had had all their trouble and worry for nothing, thinking and wondering about her.” Eileen said it would be a lesson to her, and she would never, never worry again.
So five very happy little bush girls went to bed that night, with the suspense of the last few weeks quite gone from their minds. And Willie, too, was quite jubilant.
“Anyhow, it’s better than having a cross, prim old dame that won’t let a fellow have a joke,” he said, as he lit his candle in the hall, “and we’ve only got to work things all right and I’ll bet we’ll get plenty of holidays. One thing, she can’t expect a man to be always stuck at school.”
And so school life commenced, and went on very smoothly, although now and then the children felt it a bit irksome, for they had been used to so much freedom that it was something quite new to have to answer bells and keep rules and silence in school hours, and sometimes they simply longed to tear out over the green paddocks just in the midst of a history or geography lesson. Their minds would wander away from names and dates down to the clover patch or to the river bend or some other well-known patches, and as soon as school was over they would rush off with wild hurrahing and run wild for an hour or two.
Miss Gibson, though kind, was firm, and insisted on good work and attention, and sometimes, as much as they liked her, they would get together and discuss her, and then perhaps they would come in and find her chatting brightly with Mother or helping her to make scones and cakes, and all their ill-feeling would vanish, for Mother looked so much brighter and happier since the governess came, and they would rush off to see if they, too, couldn’t help.
Sometimes in the afternoons Miss Gibson would let them off an hour earlier, and would take a walk with them. She had sometimes noticed traces of discontent in her little charges, and wished to imbue them with the love of Nature.
“Do you know, children,” she said one day, “I really don’t think you realise how well off you are.”
“Well off?” echoed the children, for they were in a discontented mood that day, and nothing seemed to go right.
“Yes—well off. Just think what you inherit. Those vast wide spaces, and the great blue dome of the sky for a roof, the beautiful sunbeams, or at night the silver-specked vault, and at your feet a great, green velvet carpet fit for kings to walk on.”