"Nice! Of course he is. Jolly nice, and jolly clever too. Why do you ask?"
"Oh—I don't know—he is a foreigner, and sometimes foreigners are—they're different."
"I don't know what you mean by different. Everybody is different from everybody else. Anyhow, he isn't a foreigner here; he is an Australian."
"What happens if you go to war?" asked Dick.
"We don't go to war. We are too far away to fight against other countries, and we will never fight each other, like America, and France, and the Wars of the Roses. There's nothing to fight about and there never will be. Of course—if we wanted to we could. We'd be first-class fighters if we weren't so peaceful. In fact," Hugh continued, in a somewhat dreamy tone, "I have invented, or at least thought about, several rather good things for fighting with—but they will never be wanted in Australia. Papa says that if ever there was a sweet and blessed country on earth it is Australia; it is full of peace and goodwill towards all men."
The English children were silent. It was a good thing, they thought, that people could not see into the future. Time-travelling was certainly best done backwards. And yet—who would want to wipe out the record of the Anzacs? Life was a fairly puzzling job, when you saw too far ahead.
"Papa says," Grizzel repeated, "that Australian people ought to be the goodest people in the world, because there is a beautiful Cross always shining in the sky to remind us of the Beloved Son, like the rainbow, so that we should never forget. But I do. Nothing in the world seems to keep me from forgetting to be good just when I most want to remember." Grizzel heaved a sigh from the very bottom of her sinful little heart.
Everyone's eyes turned towards the Southern Cross, conspicuous even amongst the myriad stars shining and throbbing with tropical brilliance in the velvety blackness of the sky. Mollie remembered that it decorated the Australian flag, and she wondered if the sight of it had made the soldiers homesick sometimes. They were real Australians, she thought to herself, born and bred in this sunny land. She could remember a day when she had been walking with her mother in the Pimlico Road—a dark, foggy, raw day in late autumn. They had come upon a group of Australian soldiers standing round the door of a little green-grocer's shop, and chaffing the good-natured shop-woman about the quality of her fruit. Mother had stopped to speak to them. Mollie could not remember exactly what had passed, but the men had been friendly and communicative, and if they had groused about the English climate they had some cause, she thought, considering the climate they had come from; and they were cheerful about the war—she could remember that, for their voices had followed them through the fog singing "Australia will be there!" to what she had thought was a very lively and pleasant tune—and yet Mother had tears in her eyes. It was a good idea, she reflected, having that device on the flag, for it really was a bit of home—for them. Poor men! Suddenly a new thought came into her mind.
"Look!" she whispered, laying a hand on Jerry's arm and pointing to the
Cross, "look! how brightly it shines! Their name liveth for evermore!"
Prue had slipped indoors and was playing a grave prelude and fugue of Bach's. The three older people joined the children in the balcony, and sat quietly listening till she had finished.