Applying, possibly, some such remedies to her mental ailment, life appeared to go on at Corindah much as it had done, Pollie thought, since the earliest days she could remember as a tiny girl. She could almost have supposed that the same things had been said by the same people, or people very like them, since her babyhood. Wonderings whether it would rain soon, by the mildly expectant; doubts whether it would ever rain again, by the scoffers and unbelievers; assertions that the seasons had changed, by the prophets of evil; superficial, sanguine predictions that it would rain some day, by the light-minded; hope and trusting confidence in the Great Ruler, by the devout, that He would not suffer his people to be utterly cast down and forsaken, that the dumb creatures of His hand would have a bound set to their sufferings—all these things had she heard and experienced from time to time ever since she could recall herself as a conscious entity. Then after a less or greater interval the blessed rain of heaven would fall, plenteously, excessively, perhaps superfluously, without warning, without limit, and the long agony of the drought would be over.

Something of this sort had Pollie been saying to her cousin, as they sat at breakfast one gusty, unsettled, red-clouded morning. He had been inquiring satirically whether it ever rained at Corindah.

'He had been here six months and had never seen any. Would all the sheep die? Would all the watercourses dry up? Would they all be forced to abandon the station? And was this a sample of Australia and its vaunted bush life?'

'Things are not quite so bad generally,' laughed Pollie; 'though I cannot deny that in these months, unless the weather changes, it will be what you call a "blue look-out." Poor mother is more anxious every week, and Mr. Gateward's face is becoming fixed in one expression, like that of a bronze idol.'

'It hardly seems like a laughing matter,' said he gravely. 'The loss of the labour of years, of a fortune, and then "Que faire?"'

'I am laughing in faith,' retorted Pollie; 'so that really I am in a more religious frame of mind than all the solemn-faced people who despair of God's goodness. Of course, it will rain some time or other. It might even rain to-night, though it does not look the least like it. Again, it might not rain for a year.'

'What a terribly incomprehensible state of matters to exist in!' said Bertram. 'I little thought, when I grumbled at a rainy week in England, what blessings in disguise I was undervaluing. And what would be the case if a small deluge took place?'

'All the rivers would be in flood. A few shepherds and mail-men, poor fellows! would be drowned, and the whole North-West country, say a thousand miles square, would be one luxuriant prairie of grass nearly as high as your head. Mr. Gateward would sing for joy as far as his musical disabilities would permit him; and poor mother's bank account would be nearly twenty thousand pounds on the right side within a few weeks.'

'And the sheep?'

'A few hundreds would die—the wet and cold would kill them, being weak. All the rest would wax fat, and perhaps kick in a month.'