“Yes, and what’d the fire be doing all this time?” asked old Joe, sarcastically. “Do you think it would wait for you to cut the grass and rake it all away, and find the bags, and all the rest of it? Oh, no, young man, you wouldn’t ha’ been alive to tell the tale to-day if you had started on them lines, and don’t you forget it! No, you couldn’t ha’ done better than your Mother,” he added, turning to the other children. “I always said, and I always will say, that your Mother’s a hero.”
“Oh, dear! isn’t it lovely to have your Mother a hero?” gasped Doris....
“Here she comes now,” said Joe. “I wonder what’s the news.”
“I say, let’s give her a cheer,” said the children.
“Well, I’d like you to, and I’d like to join in; but it mightn’t be in keepin’ with the time, seeing as how Mrs Grey is so ill.”
“Oh, yes! a good thing you thought of that, Joe,” said Mollie.
“Old Joe can think sometimes,” said Joe, well pleased.
Then Mother came in with the good news that Mrs. Grey was much better, and that a friend of hers would arrive to-morrow to look after her. Then the children cheered to their heart’s content, both because Mrs. Grey was better and because their Mother was a hero.
CHAPTER XXIII.
LETTERS.
My dear Basil,
I am in the North-West, and it is spring time! The fresh, warm-tinged air of the open spaces sends new life through the frame, waking old ambitions, recalling lost ideals and dreams of youth. The North-West world is a vast temple filled with the incense of the wattle, and the gladsome carols of feathered songsters. Just to lie on those verdant carpets and gaze into the twinkling depths of the blue sky; just to gaze and gaze and wonder and wonder again at the beauty and space and gladness of it all!
At night the sky is a silver-specked vault, charged with the silver of the Milky-Way, or flooded with the light of the moon. What a great, great pity it is that our minds and hearts ever grow old! If only we could go through life with wonder eyes, what delights and wonderments we would find in this old prosaic world. And we could, if we would, retain this sacred possession of perennial youth. It is not always the years that count. One of the youngest persons I know is a man of forty-five, and the oldest person I ever met was a boy of fourteen! Ah, those young-hearted folk! How delightful it is to meet them! Don’t they seem to make life worth while?
Down in the scrub a field of beauty stretches before me. The tall blue gums stretch towards the sky with their snow-white branches gleaming among the shadows and filtering sunlight, and here and there a mighty giant of the forest waves long, tattered, shroud-like strips of brown bark that have been cruelly stripped from their branches by the forest storms. But already the healing has come; the smooth new bark gleams and glistens in the warmth of the kindly sunlight, and the tattered shrouds wave a tender farewell to those new spirits born of their disaster.
I climb and scramble through forests of slender saplings, over fallen logs and stumps, among blue-grey vegetation or, in the next instant, among vivid green trees that grow in symmetrical beauty, as though tended by a gardener. Fancy, if one had the planning out of a bush garden in that North-West forest! What a labour of love, what a fascinating theme to work on! Clearing and thinning and “lopping”; guarding with tender and jealous care some forest beauty that now gleams tenderly through darkening, choking growth. What winding paths and avenues and clumps and groves would be formed, with here and there a cleared space for masses of garden flowers. But a haunting, elusive perfume steals gently on a slight breeze from the inner depths of the forest, and I hasten thither to be met by fresh delights. The air is filled with the cloying sweetness of budah, nipand, wild orange, and clematis blossoms.
The wild orange, or bumble, or “moogiel” (the aboriginal name) stands somewhat aloof from their neighbours. Who knows? Perhaps in the days of old they held pride of place in that vast scrub, and, mayhap, the dusky maidens twined bridal wreaths from their creamy blossoms; but howe’er it may be they stand aloof with their crown of glossy leaves and creamy blossoms and tender green fruit. Perhaps black fingers, long since stilled, wove hopes and shy thoughts among garlands of tender blossoms in the days ere the white usurper set foot on Australian shores.
I don’t know what you will think of it all, Basil, but you asked me to send along these descriptions of the North-West, and I am seeing it at its best, so you must make allowances if I enthuse. I know all about the long, drear, desolate droughts, but “why think about to-morrow if to-day be sweet,” and so I give way to keen delight of the beauty and freshness of the surroundings, and trust that I draw a vivid pen-picture of this lovely forest. MARIE.