“My name, Mayne, my lad,” said the prospector, “when I was a gentleman, and now I take it once again.”
Those two ladies looked scared and sad till they saw Mrs John, and then a change seemed to come over them, such as I had seen in Gunson—I mean Effingham—as he listened to Mr Raydon’s words.
In a week Mrs Effingham was ready for me with a smile, and Miss Effingham was singing about the place while I helped her plan a garden for the alpine flowers we collected.
Yes: that soon became a happy valley, where there was always some new pleasure of a simple kind—the arrival of boxes of seeds, or packages of fruit-trees from England, implements for the farming—endless things that civilisation asks for.
Then Esau developed into a wonderful carpenter, after instructions from Grey at the Fort; and from carpentering blossomed into cabinet-making. Every one was busy, and as for Quong, he quite settled down as cook in general, baker, and useful hand, confiding to me that he did not mean to go back to China till he died.
“This velly nice place, sah. No sabbee more ploper place. Quong velly happy, sah. You like cup flesh tea?”
He always offered me that whenever I went near him, and I think his feelings were those of every one there. For it was a pleasant sight to see Mr and Mrs John in their garden, which was half Nature-made when they began, and grew in beauty as the years rolled on, though they had formidable competitors up at the farm.
“Yes,” said Mr Effingham one day as I stood with him and Mr Raydon in the big barn—that big barn built of Douglas pine planks, cut down by Esau and me, sawn in our own mill turned by the beautiful stream—a mill erected with Mr Raydon’s help. “Yes,” he said, as he thrust his hand into a sack, and let the contents trickle back; “that’s as good wheat as they grow in England. You were right, old fellow. Do you hear, Mayne? These are the real golden grains, and the best that man can find.”