filtered air certainly works wonders.
Mr Sullivan Wooster had been sent up for a month. He occupied a high position in the musical world of Sydney. He taught, conducted concerts, gave recitals of his own on organ and piano, and composed pieces that met with high praise in the old world. An attack of pleurisy had prostrated him recently, and he had come up to the Red Road Country for his convalescence, refusing to be sent to a more distant place. A Wednesday afternoon came a week after he had arrived. He was almost dying with the ennui of the place; the abounding gum trees were beginning to prey upon his very soul. He had taken rooms at a cottage where the recommendations had been ‘No children, beautiful views, and a piano.’
But the daughter of the house had artistic yearnings that she longed to impart, a passion for waltzes, and a tousled fringe that Wooster was always dreading to find detachments of [p 65] ]in his custards. The healthful Eucalypt on hill and dale comprised the view.
Naturally he spent most of his time on the Red Road. When he heard voices in the little church that afternoon, he strolled to the door just for the urgent want of something to do. When he heard Dot’s voice, he went in and sat down in the extreme back seat, much to the discomfiture of a nervous member of the choir.
After the practice was over he shook hands with the clergyman’s wife who had officiated at the little organ. He knew her very well; she had found these lodgings for him, and had sent him tomatoes on one occasion and some of her own orange wine, marvellously nasty stuff, on another.
He asked after her husband, praised the views, thought the weather would change, said nothing bitter about the landlady’s daughter, and offered to preside at the organ the next Sunday. Then he asked to be introduced to the girl with the beautiful voice.
[p 66]
]A quarter of an hour later he was walking home with Dot.
Her books—she had three of them—were his excuse, and the fact that he had been walking that way before he turned in at the church. All the way they talked music.
Dot’s eyes were bright, her speech eager. What a pleasant, unlooked for change this was for her!
She knew him well by repute, as indeed did everyone in Sydney—she had been to his concerts, she played his compositions,—some of her friends had been his pupils,—he seemed more like an old than a new friend by the time they reached the top of the second hill. Half way down they noticed the gathering clouds; by the time they reached the gate it had begun to rain heavily.