"Indeed, it isn't. I'm alive, now—and I don't think I ever was in Melbourne. I thought I was happy there, and indeed I was. But this is different, somehow. One has so many interests. I feel part of the world now, not just a drone."
"Just raising chickens and vegetables?"
"Some one has to do it," she said. "And I didn't raise anything before—except one small boy, and even that job was nearly spoilt! Now I'm part of the world's work. Oh, I like it, Tom! You do, too, don't you?"
"My tastes have become altogether common," he said, laughing. "I'm enormously interested in the crops we've planned out for next season, and I'm going to put in Tasmanian potatoes that will make Cuninghame open its eyes! And I'm going to sow onions, and make an enormous fortune——"
"And I strawberries," Aileen said eagerly. "Think of the summer visitors, all eating them, and my bank-book swelling!"
"And there's money in those calves we bought at Metung," he said. "With that lucerne, and all the winter feed we've got, we'll have something worth looking at in the spring!"
They looked at each other, and laughed.
"So the end of it is, we say, 'Thank you very much, kind sir, but we don't want to go back from the land'—and we turn into old farmers," Aileen said. "Won't Garth rejoice!"
"And 'Possum?" Tom said.
"Oh—'Possum!" Her face grew very soft. "I told you I would always be afraid of some things, Tom. I should never have been brave enough to tell 'Possum I was going away!"