Late that night, when darkness and silence had descended on the homestead, three pairs of bright eyes peered at the stars, while Mollie, Eileen and Eva talked over the wonderful letter that was to be posted by the next mail.
CHAPTER II.
GILLONG.
Up till the evening that they had “put their heads together” and planned that wonderful letter, the Hudsons had lived much the same lives as other little bush girls, although, on the whole, it was much quieter. Just at the present it was very dull on account of the drought, and also their one neighbour, with a big family, had sold out of “Wilga” Station, and gone further west, and that had put an end to the half-time school that had flourished for twelve months between the Hudsons and Jenkins. Now only a caretaker and his wife lived at Jenkin’s homestead, so the little girls were very short of playmates. Sometimes Enid Davies, from Myall, would call to see them, or they would pay a visit to her place, but as Enid was away so much they seldom could count on her.
“Besides, Enid is so rich,” Mollie would say sometimes, “although she is real nice, but I don’t like a lot of her friends.”
Already Mollie could feel the restraint of “class” in the air.
“Things are going from bad to worse,” Eileen would often grumble. “I do wish people with big families wouldn’t sell out. There should be a law to prevent it. We could have some fun and games when the Jenkins were near, and we did have some fun at school, even if it was a bit of a nuisance at times,” and then she would sigh as she thought of the little weather-board school-house, where their teacher—a bright, fresh-faced young man from the Department—had been so keen about studies and competitions and games.
It was with regret that they all bade him good-bye, although there had been days and days when they had all felt like throwing slates and books at him—days when they could not manage columns of figures or dictation or dates, and Eileen would wish the teacher “at the bottom of the sea,” or “at the end of the world” or any other far-off place.
But he had left with words of kindly encouragement, telling them not to forget their lessons, and to read and study, till such time as they could obtain another teacher; and for a while they had tried, but it was very hard to keep up anything without someone to supervise, as they all discovered, although Mother tried her best to teach them a little every day.
“What’s the good of learning old sums?” said Eileen. “We’ll never use them.”
“Oh, you never know!” Mother would say, hopefully.