"Mr. King," says Mr. Robson, as the old man trots round the engine house wall, "I won't be spoken to like that. I've stood enough of it, I have. Mr. Neville will have to choose his words better from now on, or things will be doing. One more word like the last from him and——"
"Hi, Robson, what's this? Gracious, man, were you born with eyes shut?"
"Coming, Mr. Neville," cries Mr. Robson, crumpling up into a run.
And so the day wears on at Surprise; and the seven days go round and make the week; the four weeks add up into the month. Seven summer months and five months of winter walk in close procession until the year has turned a circle. The cry of the new-born child may startle the camp, and Mrs. Bullock, Mrs. Boulder and Mrs. Niven will repair to the scene with kind hearts and right good will, that pangs may be lessened in the hour of trial. The dead man may be laid in his red grave among the saplings on the hill, and the clock will stop an hour that brief blessing may be read. The birds sing and love make in their season. Fever comes with burning hand in its season. And thus and thus the days spin out.
Little lonely camp, set down to war with the wilderness, not much longer must you keep guard unaided. Presently across the plain the first thin railway line will come, and with it will arrive timid spirits who dared not leave such things behind. They shall make and re-make, hammer and twist you, giving you food to grow out and out. Your roofs shall glint in the sun, your streets shall be set with gardens; the hum of traffic shall be your voice going up to the wide skies. Little shabby camp, swelling presently into a great city, in the long years which wait for you, when you have grown great and weary and sick, it may be you will peer back into the past and covet forgotten days.
CHAPTER X How the Days pass by at Kaloona
The long days of early summer went by on Kaloona Station. While the last stars were leaving the sky, Jackie, the black horse-tailer, let down the slip-rails of the house paddock and cantered into the dusk, whip in hand, the sound of his horse dying slowly and solemnly in the distance. The stars would faint, the first glow of dawn would spread behind the trees upon the river, one or two birds would tune their throats a little while. Light would grow. Presently, advancing horse-bells cried across the distance, Jackie's whip banged out in the stillness, and the thud of many hoofs striking the ground rumbled from afar. With a brave chiming of bells, the horses would come home.
Mrs. Elliott, the cook, and Maggie, the maid of all other work, arose betimes on these long days. There was much to do. Mr. Power would come looking for breakfast; breakfast called for a lighted fire. There was the woodbox to visit, and horrid little Scandalous Jack to dress down should it be empty. Mrs. Elliott, ample and beaming, and very gay when you knew her well, pushed her stout leg from the sheets of a morning while the world was still grey. "Come on, Meg; it's time we was moving."