When the cattle were in the yard, and the slip rails made safe by having spare posts put across them, Wilfred unsaddled his provisional mount and walked into the house in a satisfactory mental condition.
‘So, behold you of return!’ quoted Rosamond, running to meet him, and marching him triumphantly into the dining-room, where all was ready for tea. ‘The time has been rather long. Papa has been walking about, not knowing exactly what to do, or leave undone; Guy shooting, not over-successfully. The most steadily employed member of the household, and the happiest, I suppose, has been Andrew, digging without intermission the whole time.’
‘I wish we could dig too, or have some employment found for us,’ said Annabel; ‘girls are shamefully unprovided with real work, except stocking-mending. Jeanie won’t let us do anything in the kitchen, and really, that is the only place where there is any fun. The house is so large, and echoing at night when the wind blows. And only think, we found the mark of a pistol bullet in the dining-room wall at one end, and there is another in the ceiling!’
‘How do you know it was a pistol shot?’ inquired Wilfred. ‘Some one threw a salt-cellar at the butler in the good old times.’
‘Perhaps it was fired in the good old times; perhaps it killed some one—how horrible! Perhaps he was carried out through the passage. But we know it was a shot, because Guy poked about and found the bullet flattened out.’
‘Well, we must ask Evans; very likely old Colonel Warleigh fired pistols in his mad fits. He used to sit, they say, night after night, drinking and cursing by himself after his wife died and his sons left him. No one dared go near him when his pistols were loaded. But we need not think of these things now, Annabel. He is dead and gone, and his sons are not in this part of the country. So I see you have had flower-beds made while I was away. I declare the wistaria and bignonia are breaking into flower. How gorgeous they will look!’
‘Yes, mamma said she could not exist without flowers any longer, so we persuaded Andrew, much against his will,—for he said “he was just fair harassed wi’ thae early potatoes,”—to dig these borders. Guy helped us to transplant and sow seeds, so we shall have flowers of our own once more.’
‘We shall have everything of our own in a few years if we are patient,’ said Wilfred; ‘and you damsels don’t want trips to watering-places, and so on. This life is better than Boulogne, or the Channel Islands, though it may be a trifle lonely.’
‘Boulogne! A thousandfold,’ said Rosamond. ‘Here we have life and hope. Those poor families we used to see there looked liked ghosts and apparitions of their old selves. You remember watching them walking down drearily to see the packet come in—the girls dowdy or shabby, the old people hopeless and apathetic, the sons so idle and lounging? I shudder when I think how near we were to such horrors ourselves. The very air of Australia seems to give one fresh life. Can anything be finer than this sunset?’
In truth, the scene upon which her eyes rested might have cheered a sadder heart than that of the high-hearted maiden who now, with her arm upon her brother’s shoulder, directed his gaze to the far empurpled hills, merging their violet cloud masses and orange-gold tints in the darkening eve. The green pastures, relieved by clumps of heavy-foliaged trees, glowed emerald bright against the dark-browed mountain spur. The dying sun-rays fell in fire-flakes of burning gold on the mirrored silver of the lake. Wrapped in soft tremulous mist lay the hills upon the farther shore, vast with the subtle effect of limitless distance. At such times one could dream with the faith of older days—that Earth, the universal mother, loved her children, and breathed forth in growth of herb and flower her smiling welcome.