“Rather. We know one that held twenty-two people. It was in a wild part of the bush, and whatever clergyman came along used to use it—Roman Catholic, Protestant, Presbyterian or Baptist; it didn’t matter. Every one used to roll up, for it wasn’t often there was a chance of a church service. There were lots of jobs for the travelling parson, too: all the accumulated weddings and christenings.”
“Do you tell me!” said the priest.
“My mother had three children before ever a chance came of a baptism,” said Mr. Linton. “Then the three were done together. I was the eldest, and I remember being extremely indignant about it—I was four years old, and it was winter, and the water was cold! It was a standing joke against me afterwards that I had behaved so much worse than my small brother and sister.” He laughed, and then grew grave. “Poor bush mothers! they didn’t have an easy time. Two of my mother’s babies died without ever having seen a clergyman; to the end of her life she worried about the little souls that had gone out unbaptized.”
“It was themselves needed great hearts—those pioneer women,” said the priest.
“They did; and mostly they had great hearts. But then I think most women have, if the need really comes,” Mr. Linton said. “Thousands of them were delicate, tenderly-reared women, with no experience of bush conditions in a new country; but they made good. Women have a curious way of finding themselves able to tackle any conditions with which they are actually faced. My mother never was strong, and she had no training for work; I expect she was something of a butterfly until she married my father and went off into the Never-Never. She ended by being a kind of oracle for fifty miles round; people used to send for her at all hours of the day or night, in sickness, and she developed a business capacity better than my father’s. I remember her as a little, merry thing: always tired, but never too tired to work for other people. She was only one of thousands of women doing the same thing.”
“But the process of learning must have been hard,” said the old priest, pityingly.
“Yes. It must have been a tough apprenticeship. My mother told me she used to sit down and cry often at the loneliness and strangeness of it all—in the long days when all the men were miles away from the homestead, and she was alone, with the chance of bush fires and bushrangers and wild blacks. That was until the babies came. After that there was no time to cry—which, she said, was a very good thing for her. Poor little mother!”
He sighed; and in the silence that followed a slight commotion was audible on the bridge. The priest glanced up sharply.
“Nothing—but that cruel business of the Lusitania makes everyone suspicious at sea, nowadays,” he said. “Still, the Germans may be active enough in the south, but I don’t fancy they’ll come into these landlocked waters. Too much risk from our destroyers.”
Norah was leaning over the rail.