When the stretchers were ready Norah unpacked the bedding and made their beds. Finally she hung the tooth-brushes to the ridge poles and said contentedly, “Daddy, it’s just like home!”
“Glad you think so!” said Mr. Linton, casting an approving eye over the comfortable-looking camp, and really there is something wonderfully homelike about a well-pitched camp with a few arrangements for comfort. “At any rate, I think we’ll manage very well for a few days, Norah. Now, while Billy lays in a stock of firewood and fixes up a ‘humpy’ for himself to sleep in, suppose you and I go down and try to catch some fish for tea?”
“Plenty!” laughed Norah.
It soon became evident that Anglers’ Bend was going to maintain its name as a place for fish. Scarcely was Norah’s line in the water before a big blackfish was on the hook, and after that the fun was fast and furious, until they had caught enough for two or three meals. The day was ideal for fishing—grey and warm, with just enough breeze to ripple the water faintly. Mr. Linton and Norah found it very peaceful, sitting together on the old log that jutted across the stream, and the time passed quickly. Billy at length appeared, and was given the fish to prepare, and then father and daughter returned to camp. Mr. Linton lit the fire, and cutting two stout forked stakes, which he drove into the ground, one on each side of the fire, he hung a green ti-tree pole across, in readiness to hold the billy and frying-pan. Billy presently came up with the fish, and soon a cheery sound of sizzling smote the evening air. By the time that Norah had “the table set,” as she phrased it, the fish were ready, and in Norah’s opinion no meal ever tasted half so good.
After it was over, Billy the indispensable removed the plates and washed up, and Norah and her father sat by the fire and “yarned” in the cool dusk. Not for long, for soon the little girl began to feel sleepy after the full day in the open air, and the prospect of the comfortable stretcher in her tent was very tempting. She brushed her hair outside in the moonlight, because a small tent is not the place in which to wield a hairbrush; then she slipped into bed, and her father came and tucked her up before tying the flap securely enough to keep out possible intruders in the shape of “bears” and ’possums. Norah lay watching the flickering firelight for a little while, thinking there was nothing so glorious as the open-air feeling, and the night scents of the bush; then she fell asleep.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho!!”
A cheeky jackass on a gum tree bough fairly roared with laughter, and Norah woke up with a violent start. The sunlight was streaming across her bed. For a moment she was puzzled, wondering where she was; then the walls of the tent caught her eye, and she laughed at herself, and then lay still in the very pleasure of the dewy morning and the wonderful freshness of the air. For there is a delight in awaking after a night in the open that the finest house in the world cannot give.
Presently the flap of the tent was parted and Mr. Linton peeped in.
“Hallo!” he said, smiling, “did the old jackass wake you? I found him as good as an alarum clock myself. How about a swim?”
“Oh—rather!” said Norah, tumbling out of bed. She slipped on a jacket and shoes, and presently joined her father, and they threaded their way through the scrub until they came to a part of the creek where a beach, flat and sandy, and shelving down to a fairly deep hole, offered glorious bathing. Mr. Linton left Norah here, and himself went a few yards farther up, round a bend in the creek.