The house was thatched and whitewashed, and English was written on it and on every foot of ground around it. A furze bush had been planted by the door. Vertical oak palings were the fence, with a five-barred gate in the middle of them. From the little plantation all the magnificent trees and shrubs of Australia had been excluded with amazing resolution and consistency, and oak and ash reigned, safe from overtowering rivals. They passed to the back of the house, and there George’s countenance fell a little, for on the oval grass-plot and gravel-walk he found from thirty to forty rough fellows, most of them diggers.
“Ah, well,” said he, on reflection, “we could not expect to have it all to ourselves, and, indeed, it would be a sin to wish it, you know. Now, Tom, come this way: here it is, here it is,—there.” Tom looked up, and in a gigantic cage was a light-brown bird.
He was utterly confounded. “What! is it this we came twelve miles to see?”
“Ay! and twice twelve wouldn’t have been much to me.”
“Well, and now where is the lark you talked of?”
“This is it.”
“Well, and isn’t a lark a bird?”
“Oh! ay, I see! Ha, ha! ha, ha!”
Robinson’s merriment was interrupted by a harsh remonstrance from several of the diggers, who were all from the other end of the camp.