“Etheldene, have him for a brother, will you?”
The rich blood mounted to her cheeks and brow. She cast one half-shy, half-joyful look at Archie, and simply murmured, “Yes.”
It was all over in a moment then. Etheldene struck her horse lightly across the crest with the handle of her stock whip, and next minute both horses were galloping as if for dear life.
When Archie told Rupert how things had turned out, he only smiled in his quiet manner.
“It is a queer way of wooing,” he said; “but then you were always a queer fellow, Archie, and Etheldene is a regular Bush baby, as Craig calls her. Oh, I knew long ago she loved you!”
At the year’s end then both Elsie and Etheldene were married, and married, too, at the same church in Sydney from which Bob led Sarah, his blushing bride. It might not have been quite so wild and daft a wedding, but it was a very happy one nevertheless.
No one was more free in blessing the wedded couples than old Kate. Yes, old as she was, she had determined not to be left alone in England.
We know how Bob spent his honeymoon. How were the new young folks to spend theirs? Oh, it was all arranged beforehand! And on the very morning of the double marriage they embarked—Harry and Bob going with them for a holiday—on board Captain Vesey’s pretty yacht, and sailed away for England. Etheldene’s dream of romance was about to become a reality; she was not only to visit the land of chivalry, but with Archie her husband and hero by her side.
The yacht hung off and on the shore all day, as if reluctant to leave the land; but towards evening a breeze sprang up from the west, the sails filled, and away she went, dancing and curtseying over the water like a thing of life.
The sunset was bewitchingly beautiful; the green of the land was changed to a purple haze, that softened and beautified its every outline; the cloudless sky was clear and deep; that is, it gave you the idea you could see so far into and through it. There was a flush of saffron along the horizon; above it was of an opal tint, with here and there a tender shade of crimson—only a suspicion of this colour, no more; and apparently close at hand, in the east, were long-drawn cloudlets of richest red and gold.