Nearing home Cameron gave the reins to Bartie, and leaped out and walked the last mile or two, wrestling with the problem how he might turn himself from a dreamer of dreams into a practicable, hard-working man of business. It had to be done, some way, somehow, or what to do with these children, and how to face his wife?
Then suddenly he found his thoughts had wandered to the sunset fire that blazed before him in the sky; he was putting it in a picture, massing up the purple banks, touching the edges with a streak of scarlet.
When he convicted himself of the wandering he groaned aloud.
'There is only one way,' he said, and walked into his house with lifted head.
The children were stretching their limbs after their cramping drive, Roly and Bart panting on the floor, a cup of water beside them so warm and flat and tasteless that even thirst would not bring them to it. Bart was talking of Nansen, picturing stupendous icebergs, revelling in the exquisite frigidity of the water in which Nansen had washed luxuriously every day. The exercise actually cooled the little party down one degree. Then in to them came their father.
'I want a bonfire made in the yard,' he said; 'a very big one, I have something to burn.'
The boys were upright in a moment and on their way; even Floss tossed down the newspaper with which she was fanning herself (the Wilgandra Times, with which was incorporated the Moondi Mercury), and rushed to partake of the fun, and Hermie and Miss Browne found themselves impelled to go and see what was happening.
Such a blaze! Bart raked up a lot of garden rubbish and added tree branches. Roly, feeling quite authorised since the bonfire had been commanded by his father and was no illicit one of his own, made journeys to and from the wood-heap and piled on the better part of a quarter of a ton of wood just paid for.
Then down came the father, his blue eyes a little wild, his mouth not quite under his own control. He had his mustard-box under his arm.
'Oh, daddie!' Hermie cried and sprang at him. 'Oh no, no, no!'