"Well, it is fearfully dull, isn't it?" Nesta said. "England must be quite different. English stories always make me ache to go there. It must be so awfully interesting, mustn't it?"
"Wouldn't it be splendid if father said suddenly one day we could all go to England!" Peter cried excitedly.
"I don't think there is the least chance of that," Eustace said. "You heard what he said about its being too expensive to take us even to Brisbane. It would cost ten times as much to go to England."
"I say," Nesta said quickly, "I wonder why father has to go to Brisbane in such a hurry? Don't you, Eustace?"
"I haven't thought about it," Eustace answered. "But, anyhow, mother doesn't like his going—that's very clear."
"Doesn't she?" Nesta asked in a surprised voice. "How do you know?"
"Didn't you see her face when father said he must go?" Eustace asked with a touch of impatience.
Nesta shook her head.
"Oh!" was all Eustace exclaimed; then he turned, and resting his elbows on the railings, stared straight ahead with unseeing eyes.
The Orbans' house was built on the top of an isolated hill three hundred feet above a valley which, except where the scrub had been cleared for the growing of sugar-cane, was thickly wooded. On three sides of the valley, stretching round like a great horse-shoe, lay range upon range of hills, now softest purple. The fourth side, on which the boy gazed, was bounded by the sea—a shimmering patch of blue. No scene could have been grander, none more infinitely lonely. But Eustace was not thinking about it either admiringly or otherwise.