And the same train that brought her home carried Willie’s letter back to his Mother:
My Dear Mother,
I am very, very happy up here, and I am not at all home-sick like Eileen is, because you see I am kept pretty busy. Mr. Hudson doesn’t know how ever he can get on without me again. I am a great help to him. Every evening I bring in the cows and pen up the carves. They are little beauties—five spotted ones and a rone, and a red. If he was a foal they would call him bay, but they don’t have bay carves—only red, so you will know that whenever you are talking about them; but foals are bay, not red, and they’d all know you came from Sydney if you started calling them the wrong names. I am a good rider now, and I can yard sheep and drive horses and do thousands of other things. Tell Dad not to go troublin’ about getting me into an office later on, because I mean to take a job of handy man on a station—that is, if ever I leave here again. Mr. Hudson calls me his handy man, and I am sure I am a great help to him. It wouldn’t be very nice of me to leave him when I am such a help, and, besides, I’m not a bit home-sick. If you feel you want to see me very bad you ought to come up here. It isn’t so very far—only about 420 miles from Sydney; and if you are a good sleeper you can go to sleep just after you leave Sydney and wake up just before you get to the last station here, and you wouldn’t know you’d been travelling all the time, so you wouldn’t feel a bit tired.
I hope you won’t be writing for me to go home for a long time yet, as I want to spend the winter up here, and then the spring, because thousands of birds will build their nests in the bush trees, and I want to see the young ones, and it will be very hard luck if I don’t see them after coming all this way; and I want to see the everlasting daisies all over the paddocks, and I am sure you will be nice and kind and let me stay; and I wish you were here now to have a good old roll in the clover—it’s great! I’m sure Dad would like it, ’specially if he had his old gardening suit on, and it don’t matter if it gets covered with green.
The shearing was great. I wish we could have months of it. There is going to be another one in the spring, and I’m going to be tar-boy and general useful in the shed, and Mr. Hudson is going to pay me some wages. I told him not to bother, but he says he will; so I’ll send you a check when I get enough to make one, and you ought to have a trip to the mountains with it. I wish you were up here to see me working.
Well, Mother, I have written you a nice long letter. Excuse any mistakes in spelling and grammar and stops, but I don’t think there’s very many, because I’ve kept singing out to Mollie and asking her how to spell a lot of words. I don’t think I want much more schooling. I think a man can make plenty of money without, and it’s no use spending money on books when you don’t want ’em.
I hope now that you will know that I’m not home-sick. I don’t think boys do get home-sick much, ’cept when their hungry; and with love to you and Dad from your loving and grateful and happy son, WILLIE.
P.S.—Love to Marcia. I nearly forgot her. A man does soon forget his sisters when he’s away from them. Tell her I’ll take her home a present when I go—a kangaroo or emu or some sort of bird. Yours truly, WILLIE.
Willie’s mother, when she received this, shook her head and said, “Well, well, I suppose I had better let him stay; he seems so happy, but I do wish he missed me a bit,” she added with a sigh.
“He’s too young yet to understand things,” laughed Dad, as he re-read the letter. “So Willie’s just got into double figures, and he thinks he has had enough schooling, and wants to start money-making. Well, well, boys will be boys,” and he pocketed the letter to show to some of his cronies at the Club, while Mother spent the best part of the morning hunting for it to show it to Auntie Grace, never dreaming that it had already gone the rounds of the Club, where it had raised many a hearty laugh, as seasoned business men recalled again their lost youth and young ideas.
CHAPTER XV.
EILEEN’S RETURN.
Eileen’s head was craned far out of the train as it drew into the station, where Teddy, with a broad smile on his face, was waiting for the mail and any stray passengers.
“Anyone here to meet me, Ted?” she asked as she bounded out.
“You have to come with me in the sulky,” answered Ted.
“Go with you? Oh, I say, I am disappointed!”
“That’s a nice greeting for a man!” said Teddy.