When they were unpacking their much-ravelled chattels the first night in Wilgandra, James Cameron came to his great paint-box that the late family vicissitudes had prevented him touching for so long.
'Ah,' he said, and a light of great pleasure came into his grey eyes as he lifted it from the packing-case and rubbed the dust off it with his good cuff—'mine old familiar friend. Why, Molly darling, I shan't know myself with a brush in my hand again. With all the spare time there will be here, I ought to do some good work at last.'
Then his wife laid down the stack of little torn pinafores and patched jackets and frocks she was lifting from another box, and crossed the room and knelt down by her husband's side, just where he was kneeling beside the rough packing-case that had held his treasure.
'Dear one,' she said, 'dear one, Jim, Jim,'—one hand went round his neck, her head, with its warm brown hair that the grey was threading years too soon, pressed against his shoulder, her face, old, young, sad, smiling, looked into his, her brave brown eyes held tears.
'Why, little woman,' he said, 'what is it—what is troubling you? Smiling time has come again, Molly, the worries are all left behind with Sydney.'
'Jim,' she said, and her hand tightened on the paint-box he held, 'Jim, do you know we have five children, five of them, five?'
'Well, girlie,' he said, and got up and sat down on the edge of the box and drew her beside him, 'haven't we an income of two hundred and thirty pounds for them, a princely sum, when we are in a place where there is nothing to tempt us to buy? And we hardly left any debts behind us this time.'
'But, dearest, dearest,' she urged, 'if you get hold of this, we shall not have it a year; you will get up in cloudland and forget to furnish your returns or some such thing, and then you will be dismissed again.'
'Ah, Molly,' he said, his face falling, 'always the gloomy side. Couldn't you have given me a night of happiness?'
A stinging tear fell from the woman's eyes.