It was yet early in the day, and the captain had duties to attend to which would keep him employed until the evening. "I've ordered a carriage at six," he said, "when we'll start for Marahmee, which is about half-an-hour's drive. Until that time you can go ashore if you like; the Botanical Gardens are just round that point, or walk down George Street, or in any other way amuse yourselves. Meanwhile, consider yourselves at home also."
"I think we'll stay at home then, captain, for the present," said Miranda, "and watch the people on shore. You have no idea how they interest me. Everything is so new. Remember that I have never seen a carriage in my life before, or a cab, or a soldier; there goes one now—isn't he beautiful to behold? I shall sit here and make Hilary tell me the names of all the specimens as they come into view."
"That will do capitally," said the captain. "I might have known that you could amuse yourself without help from any one."
The time passed quickly enough, with the aid of lunch. The decks were cleared by six o'clock, by which time we were ready for the hired barouche when it drove up.
Miranda and I had employed our time so well that she had learnt the names of various types of character, and many products of civilisation, of which she had been before necessarily ignorant, except from books. "It is a perfect object lesson," she said. "How delightful it is to be able to see the things and people that I have only read about! I feel like those people in the Arabian Nights who had been all their lives in a glass tower on a desert island. Not that our dear Norfolk Island was a desert—very far from it. And now I am going to the first grand house I ever saw, and to live in it—more wonderful still. I feel like a princess in a fairy tale," she went on, as she smilingly skipped into the carriage. "Everything seems so unreal. Do you think this will turn into a pumpkin, drawn by mice, like poor Cinderella's? Hers was a chariot, though. What is a chariot?"
"I remember riding in one when I was a small boy," I answered; "and, by the same token, I had caught a number of locusts, and put them into my hat. I was invited to uncover, as the day was warm. When I did so, the locusts flew all about the closed-up carriage and into everybody's face. But chariots are old-fashioned now."
Onward we passed along the South Head road, while below us lay the harbour with its multitudinous bays, inlets, promontories, and green knolls, in so many instances crowned with white-walled gardens, surrounding villas and mansions, all built of pale-hued, delicately-toned sandstone.
"Oh! what a lovely, delicious bay!" cried Miranda; "and these are the Heads, where we came in. Good-bye, old ocean, playfellow of my childhood; farewell, wind of the sea, for a while. But I shall live near you still, and hear you in my dreams. I should die—I should feel suffocated—if nothing but woods and forests were to be seen."
"If you don't die until you can't see the ocean, or feel the winds about here, you will live a long time, my dear," said the captain. "I don't know a more sea-going population anywhere than this Sydney one. Half the people you meet here have been a voyage, and the boys take to a boat as the bush lads do to a horse. But here we are at the Marahmee gates, and there's my pet Antonia on the verandah ready to receive us."