“The drought has broken up. The river is tearing down a banker. You can see the grass grow already. All bother about feed and water put safely away for a year at least. Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!
“I have sent most of the sheep out back. Dams all full, but none carried away, thank goodness!
“I got the hill paddock fence finished and the weaners all into it yesterday. Didn’t get home till midnight.
“The run like a batter pudding, soaked right down to the bed rock. We shall have more grass than we can use. Old Saville (Save-all, I call him!) would sell five thousand young sheep, mixed sexes. He wants to realise. If Mr. Barrington Hope, or whatever his name is, will stand it, they would pay to buy. Wire me if I can close, but of course I don’t expect it.
“I think I may safely treat myself to John Richard Green’s Making of England and Motley’s Rise of the Dutch Republic, so please post them. Everything looking first-rate. Laura is writing too.
“Your loving son,
Hubert Stamford.”
Next came a letter in a neat, characteristic, legible hand, not angular-feminine, which he well knew:—
“Oh! darling Dad,—We are all gone straight out of our senses with joy. We have had such blessed and beauteous rain. The windows of Heaven have indeed been opened—where else could such a lovely downpour come from?
“All our doubts and fears are cleared away. Hubert has been working himself to death, poor boy; off before daylight and never home till twelve or one in the morning. He says that we shall have the best season known for years, and that nothing can possibly hurt the grass for a whole twelvemonth. Besides, more rain is sure to come. They always say that though. Some water came through here and there, but it was a blessing that Hubert and the old splitter put the new roof over the kitchen before the drought broke up. The dear garden looks lovely, I have been sowing a few flower seeds—so fresh and beautiful it is already.