"Hilary and I were married just a month after he asked me to be his wife, you know very well."
So, jesting lightly, and with a breeze that sufficed just to fill the great sails of the yacht, we glided along until we had explored the recesses of Middle harbour,—a spacious inlet winding amid the thick growing semi-tropical forest which clothed the slopes of the bays and promontories to the water's edge.
Here and there were small clearings in which might be discovered a tent or cabin, just sufficient for the needs of a couple of bachelors or a hermit, who here desired to live during his holiday amid this "boundless contiguity of shade"—"The world forgetting, and the world forgot."
"Oh, how lovely!" said Mrs. Percival, as we swept round a point and came suddenly upon a fairy-like nook, a tiny bay with milk-white strand and fantastic sandstone rocks. There was a fenced enclosure around a cabin. There was a boat, with rude stone pier and boat-house. The owner, in cool garb and broad-leafed sombrero, was seated on a rock reading, and occasionally dabbling his bare feet in the rippling tide. As the yacht glided past in the deep water which came so close to his possessions, he raised his hat to the ladies, and resumed his studies.
"What a picture of peace and restful enjoyment!" said Mrs. Craven. "How I envy men who can seclude themselves like this within an hour's sail from a city! Now, people are so fond of generalising about colonists, and how wrong they are! They always describe them as wildly energetic and restless people, perpetually rushing about in search of gain or gold."
"That's Thorndale," said one of the younger guests. "He works hard enough at his business when he is about it, but his notion of enjoyment is to come here on a Saturday with only a boat-keeper, to fish, and read, and smoke till Monday morning, when he goes back to his law and his office."
"Sensible fellow!" said the colonel. "There's nothing like tent life to recruit a man's health after a spell of official work. We used to manage that in India, when we couldn't go all the way to the hills, by forming small encampments of a dozen or twenty fellows, having a mess-house in common, and living in tents or huts separately when we were not hunting or shooting. Splendid life while it lasted! Sent us back twice the men we were, when we left the lines!"
We anchored for lunch in one of the fairy nooks of which that enchanted region is so lavish. There was tea for the ladies and something presumably stronger for the seniors. We had mirth and pleasantries, spoken and acted—all went merrily in that charmed sunshine and beneath the shadowy sea-woods. We had songs—"A mellow voice Fitz Eustace had"—that is, one of the young fellows, native and to the manner born, lifted up his tuneful pipe and made us all laugh, the air he sang being certainly not "wild and sad,"—the reverse, indeed.
"Now, is not this an ideal picnic,—a day rescued from that terrible fiend Ennui, that haunts us all?" cried Miss Vavasour. "I might truthfully, perhaps, except myself, who am frivolous, and therefore easily amused—but of course it sounds well to complain and be mysterious. But, really, this is life indeed! The climate makes up for any little deficiency. I shall positively go home and arrange my affairs, make sure of my allowance being paid quarterly, then take a cottage near Miranda, on that sweet North Shore,—isn't that what you call it?—and live happy ever afterwards like a 'maid of Llangollen.'"
"Nothing can be nicer," said Mrs. Neuchamp. "We'll all three live here in the summer, within reach of the sea-breeze. In June you must come up and stay with me at Rainbar; then you will know what the glory of winter in our Riverina is like."