In giving way to vain imaginings of this kind, Findlayson was really ignoring, or forgetting at all events, the sentiments of his own favourite poet, Burns, as impressed in the following touching lines:
“It ne’er was wealth, it ne’er was wealth,
That bought contentment, peace, or pleasure;
The bands and bliss o’ mutual love,
O that’s the chiefest warld’s treasure!”
His sister was very straightforward, and at once put her brother down as a wee bit daft. Perhaps he really was; only the old saying is a true one: “Those that are in love are like no one else.”
It was the last month of winter, when early one morning a gay party from Burley New Farm set out to visit Findlayson, and spend a week or two in order to “’liven him up,” as Harry expressed it.
Bob was not particularly fond of going much from home—besides, Winslow and he were planning some extensions—so he stopped on the Station. But Harry went, and, as before, when going to the kangaroo hunt, Gentleman Craig was in the cavalcade, and of course Rupert and Elsie.
It would have been no very difficult matter to have done the journey in a single day, only Archie was desirous of letting his brother and sister have a taste of camping out in the Bush.
They chose the same route as before, and encamped at night in the self-same place.
The evening too was spent in much the same way, even to singing and story-telling, and Craig’s lullaby to Baby, when she and Elsie had gone to their tent.
Morning dawned at last on forest and plain, and both Harry and the brothers were early astir. It would have been impossible to remain asleep much after daybreak, owing to the noise of the birds, including the occasional ear-splitting clatter of the laughing jackasses.