And the post which brought that letter brought another which was almost as important. Jack's father was coming to take his boy home; indeed, within a week of the letter's departure he would be on his way. Pressure of business would make his stay in the colony a short one, "but I always promised Jack to come and fetch him, and I will keep my word."
He gave the name of the liner in which his passage was taken, and the date when she was due at Melbourne.
"But mother—it's too delightful," said Betty, looking up from the letter. "Jack's father is coming and is due in Melbourne on the 18th or 19th of December. By good luck he should be here on Jack's Confirmation day. Won't it be beautiful if he is?"
And through the coming weeks Betty lived on in happy expectation, wondering what she had done to deserve such happiness. Jack was coming, and Jack's father, and, what was greater still, her own Tom, from whom, God willing, she would never again be separated.
Clarissa had clamoured to make her her wedding gown, but Betty asserted she did not mean to have one.
"Tom and I are of one mind," she said. "We think the greatest and holiest day of our lives shall not be desecrated by flutter and fuss. I'll be married in a coat and skirt, a white one if you prefer it, and we mean to have no fuss of any kind, and we want only those present who love us, and will say their prayers for us. We have not yet settled the day, but it will be pretty soon after he comes, for he has marching orders to return to England. He means to take our passages for about the end of the year. Don't you wish you were coming too?"
"No, I don't," said Clarissa, vehemently. "I love this place and its kind, warm-hearted people, and I love your father and mother, and mean to make up your loss to them as far as I can. I know it will be very imperfectly accomplished, but just think of the desolation which will be theirs when you've left them for good, gone out of their reach, Betty."
Tears stood in Betty's eyes. "Yes, I know, and often I wonder at myself for doing it, and yet—it's not that I love them less than I ever did, that I don't know what I'm leaving behind me, but if Tom were going to the uttermost parts of the earth I feel my call to go with him. I love him better than life itself, Clarissa. Don't you know what I mean?"
Clarissa was very white. "Yes, I loved George like that, but, unlike you, I married without the sanction of my father, and I never felt that God's blessing followed me as it will follow you, my Betty, going before and after like the pillar of cloud that guided the Israelites. It's because I love George so dearly that I don't want to go home. I want to live and die in the country where we spent our short married life together."
On the 16th of December Betty stood in her simple white gown waiting at the corner of the green lane for the evening coach that was to bring Tom and Jack from the station, and as she heard the rattle of the wheels and the sound of the galloping horses breasting the hill, her own heart beat in joyful sympathy, for her happiness was close at hand. And almost before the coach stood still, Tom and Jack had jumped from their seats on the top, and were taking her eagerly between them up the green lane towards the farm.