“When you go home again, Miss Dacre,” said Hubert, “you will be able to do battle for us, I see. We must make you Agent-General, or Ambassadress, if any such post is vacant. I am sure you will do us justice.”
“Indeed I shall, but I feel ashamed of the ludicrous notions which I brought out with me. No one would think of going down to Yorkshire and saying, ‘I suppose you have nothing newer in songs than “The days when we went gipsying,”’ or asking the Edinburgh people if they had ever seen a bicycle. But really men and women who have had ‘advantages,’ as they are called, do come out here (five weeks from England) and expect to see you living a sort of Fenimore Cooper life, cutting down trees, ‘trailing’ your enemies, and sleeping in wigwams or huts only once removed.”
“Perhaps a portion of this is natural enough,” said Hubert, “we are a long way from town.”
“No, it is not natural,” said Miss Dacre; “because have not so many of our friends come out for generations past? And then for us to think that their sons and daughters were to grow up as clods and belles sauvages!”
“It will all come right in time,” said Hubert. “It doesn’t hurt us, if it pleases them, always excepting people”—here he bowed—“whom we don’t want to have wrong impressions about us. Wait till you get fairly settled at Wantabalree, Miss Dacre, and you’ll lose a few more illusions.”
“Oh! but I don’t want to lose all of them,” replied the young lady. “Some of them are so nice, that I want to retain them in full freshness. I am going to keep pigs and poultry and send wonderful hams to England to show our people what we can do. I am going to be a great walker, and write letters about my impressions to the magazines. I am sure they will do good. Then I shall have a good collection of books, and grow quite learned, besides making myself acquainted with all the people round about, and doing good among the poor. I am certain there is a great field for an energetic person like myself.”
“True!” replied Hubert reflectively. “Australians are rarely energetic, and your programme is excellent. I fully agree with all your plans and ideas, but I am only afraid there may be difficulties in the way of carrying them out.”
“You really are most disappointing people—you colonists.” Here Hubert held up his finger warningly.
“Oh! I forgot. I am not to call you colonists, but to talk to you as if you were like everybody else—is not that so? Well—but you do disappoint me. There is an air of guarded toleration, or mild disapproval, which I observe among all of you when I begin to talk of carrying out reforms. You are very polite, I admit; but tell me now, why should I not? Surely one does not come all this way to do only what everyone else does!”
Josie laughed. Hubert looked sympathetic, but did not offer an explanation. Then Mrs. Grandison took up the running. “My dear, you are quite right in wishing to do everything in your power in the way of good; it is what every girl ought to strive after. It would keep them out of mischief, and so on. But where you English people—when you first come out, not afterwards—differ a little from us is that you are all going to set us benighted colonists right, and to improve us in a great many ways. You say, “I only want to do my duty—just as one would do in England,” but the idea is that you can improve things ever so much.”