The small but gay parterres, which the girls and Mrs. Effingham kept, with some difficulty, free from weeds, were lovely to the eye as contrasted with the bright green sward of the lawn.
The wildfowl dived and flew upon the lake, furnishing forth for a while—as in obedience to Mr. Effingham’s wishes a close season was kept—unwonted supplies to the larder.
All the minor living possessions of the family appeared to bask and revel in the sunshine of the general prosperity. The greyhounds, comfortably housed and well fed, had reared a family, and were commencing to master the science of killing kangaroos without exposing themselves to danger.
The Jersey cow, Daisy, had produced a miniature copy of herself, in a fawn-coloured heifer calf, while her son, ‘The Yerl of Jersey,’ as Andrew had christened him, had become a thick-set, pugnacious, important personage, pawing the earth, and bellowing unnecessarily, as if sensible of the exalted position he was destined to take, as a pure bred Jersey bull, under two years of age, at the forthcoming Yass Agricultural Show.
As the days grew longer, and the daily tasks of labour became less exciting in the neighbourhood, as well as at Warbrok Chase, much occasional visiting sprang up. The stable was once more capable of modest entertainment, though far from emulating the hospitalities of the past, when, in the four-in-hand drag of the reigning regiment, the fashionables of the day thought worth while to rattle over the unmade roads for the pleasure of a week’s shooting on the lake by day, with the alternative of the Colonel’s peerless claret by night. Andrew’s boy, Duncan, a solemn lad of fourteen, whom his occasionally impatient sire used to scold roundly, was encouraged to be in attendance to receive the stranger cavalry.
For one afternoon, Fred Churbett’s Grey Surrey, illustrious as having won the Ladies’ Bag two years running at the Yass Races, and, as such, equal in provincial turf society to a Leger winner, would canter daintily up to the garden gate, followed perhaps at no great interval by Charlie Hamilton’s chestnut, Red Deer, in training for the Yass Maiden Plate, and O’Desmond’s Wellesley, to ensure whose absolute safety he brought his groom. On the top of all this Captain and Mrs. Snowden would arrive, until the dining-room, half filled with the fashion of the district, did not look too large after all.
By degrees, rising to the exigencies of his position, Wilfred managed to get hold of a couple of ladies’ horses, by which sensible arrangement at least three of the family were able to enjoy a ride together, also to return Mrs. Snowden’s call, and edify themselves with the conversation of that amusing woman of the world.
And the more Mr. Effingham and his sons saw of the men composing the little society which shared with them the very considerable district in which they resided, the more they had reason to like and respect them.
The blessed Christmastide was approaching. How different was it in appearance from the well-remembered season in their own beloved home! A thousand reminiscences came rushing across the fields of memory, as the Effinghams thought of the snow-clad hedges, the loaded roofs, the magical stillness of the frost-arrested air. Nor were all the features of the season attractive. Heavy wraps, closed doors, through which, in spite of heaped-up fires, keen draught and invisible chills would intrude; the long evenings, the dark afternoons, the protracted nights, which needed all the frolic spirits of youth, the affection of home life, and the traditional revelry of the season to render endurable.