"Yerra, I misremember doin' any such thing," said Murty, slightly confused. "'Tis the way I was most likely goin' afther a sick bullock, or it might be 'possum shootin'." He raised his cup and took a deep draught; then, with a wry face, gazed at its contents. "I dunno is this a new brand of tea you're afther usin', now? Sure, it looks pale."

Mrs. Brown cast a glance at the cup he held out, and gave a gasp of horror.

"Well, not in all me born days 'ave I made tea an' forgot to put the tea in!" she exclaimed, s.n.a.t.c.hing it from his hand. "Don't you go an' tell Dave and Mick, Murty, or I'll never hear the end of it. Lucky there's plenty of hot water." She emptied the teapot swiftly, and refilled it, this time with due regard to the tea-caddy.

"Now, Murty, don't you sit there grinnin' at me like a hyener--it isn't every day I get Miss Norah home."

"It is not," said Murty, taking his renewed cup and a large piece of bread and b.u.t.ter. "Sure, I'd not blame ye if ye fried bacon in the tea-pot--not this morning. I dunno, meself, am I on me head or me heels.

All the men is much the same; they've been fallin' over each other, tryin' to get a little bit of extra spit-an'-polish on the whole place.

I b'lieve Dave Boone wud 'a' set to work an' whitewashed the paddock fences if I'd encouraged him at all."

"There's that Sarah," said Mrs. Brown. "Ornery days it takes me, an alarum clock, an' Mary, to say nothin' of a wet sponge, to get her out of bed. But bless you--these last three days she's up before the pair of us, rubbin' an' polishin' in every corner. An' she an' 'Ogg at each other's throats over flowers; she wantin' to pick every one to look pretty in the 'ouse, an' 'Ogg wantin' every one to look pretty in the garden."

"Well, Hogg's got enough an' to spare," was Murty's comment. "No union touch about his work. I reckon he's put in sixteen hours a day at that garden since we heard they were comin'."

"But there never was any union touch about Billabong," said Mrs. Brown.

"Not much! We all know when we're well off," said Murty. "I'll bet no union was ever as good a boss as David Linton."

Two other men appeared at the kitchen door--Mick Shanahan and Dave Boone--each wearing, in defiance of regulations, some battered remnant of uniform that marked the "digger," while Mick, in addition, would walk always with a slight limp. He was accustomed to say 'twas a mercy it didn't hinder his profession--which, being that of a horsebreaker, freed him, as a rule, from the necessity of much walking. Other men Billabong had sent to the war, and not all of them had come back; the lonely station had been a place of anxiety and of mourning. But to-day the memories of the long years of fighting and waiting were blotted out in joy.

"Come in, boys," Mrs. Brown nodded at the men. "Tea's ready. What's it going to be?"

"Fine, I think," said Boone, replying to this somewhat indefinite question with complete certainty as to the questioner's meaning. "I seen you an' Murty pokin' your heads up at them clouds, but there ain't nothin' in them." A smile spread over his good-looking, dark face.

"Bless you, it couldn't rain today, with Miss Norah comin' home!"

"I don't believe, meself, that Providence 'ud 'ave the 'eart," said Mrs.

Brown. "Picksher them now, all flyin' round and gettin' ready to start, and s.n.a.t.c.hin' a bite of breakfast--"

"If I know Master Jim 'twill be no bite he'll s.n.a.t.c.h!" put in Mick.

"Well, all I 'ope is that the 'otel don't poison them," said Mrs.

Brown darkly. "I on'y stopped in a Melbin' 'otel once, and then I got pot-o'-mine poisoning, or whatever they call it. I've 'eard they never wash their saucepans!"

"No wonder you get rummy flavours in what you eat down there, if that's so," said Dave. "Surprisin' what the digestions of them city people learn to put up with. Well, I suppose you won't be addin' to their risks by puttin' up much of a dinner for them to-day, Mrs. Brown." He grinned wickedly.

"You go on, imperence!" said the lady. "If I let you look into the larder now (w'ich I won't, along of knowin' you too well), there'd be no gettin' you out to work to-day. Murty, that turkey weighed five-and-thirty pound!"

"Sure he looked every ounce of it," said Murty. "I niver see his aiqual--he was a regular Clydesdale of a bird!"

"I rose him from the aig meself," said Mrs. Brown, "and I don't think I could 'a' brung meself to 'ave 'im killed for anythink less than them comin' 'ome. As it was, I feel 'e's died a n.o.bil death. An' 'e'll eat beautiful, you mark my words."

"Well, it'll be something to think of the Boss at the head of his table, investigatin' a Billabong turkey again," said Boone, putting down his empty cup. "And as there's nothing more certain than that they'll all be out at the stables d'reckly after dinner, wantin' to see the 'orses, you an' I'd better go an' shine 'em up a bit more, Mick." They tramped out of the kitchen, while Mrs. Brown waddled to the veranda and cast further anxious glances at the bank of clouds lying westward.

Norah was watching them, too. She was sitting in the corner of the compartment, as the swift train bore them northward, with her eyes glued to the country flying past. Just for once the others did not matter to her; her father, Jim, and Wally, each in his own corner, as they had travelled so many times in the past, coming back from school. Then she had had eyes only for them; to-day her soul was hungry for the dear country she had not seen for so long. It lay bare enough in the early winter--long stretches of stone-walled paddocks where the red soil showed through the spa.r.s.e, native gra.s.s; steep, stony hillsides, with little sheep grazing on them--pygmies, after the great English sheep; oases of irrigation, with the deep green of lucerne growing rank among weed-fringed water-channels; and so on and on, past little towns and tiny settlements, and now and then a stop at some place of more importance. But Norah did not want the towns; she was homesick for the open country, for the scent of the gum trees coming drifting in through the open window, for the long, lonely plains where grazing cattle raised lazy eyes to look at the roaring engine, or horses flung up nervous heads and went racing away across the gra.s.s--more for the fun of it than from fear. The gum trees called to her, beckoned to her; she forgot the smooth perfection of the English landscape as she feasted her eyes on the dear, untidy trees, whose dangling strips of bark seemed to wave to her in greeting, telling her she was coming home. They pa.s.sed a great team of working bullocks in a wagon loaded with an enormous tree trunk; twenty-four monsters, roan and red and speckled, with a great pair of polled Angus in the lead; they plodded along in their own dust, their driver beside them with his immense whip over his shoulder. Norah pointed them out to the others with a quick exclamation, and Jim and Wally came to look out from her window.

"By Jove, what a team!" said Jim. "Well, just at this moment I'd rather see those fellows than the meet of the Coaching Club in Hyde Park--and I had a private idea that that was the finest sight in the world!"

"Aren't you a jungly animal!" quoth Wally.

"Rather--just now," Jim rejoined. "Some day, I suppose, I'll be glad to go back to London, and look at it all again. But just now there doesn't seem to be anything to touch a fellow's own country--and that team of old sloggers there is just a bit of it. Isn't it, old Nor?" She nodded up at him; there was no need of words.

The morning was drawing towards noon when they came in sight of their own little station: Cunjee, looking just as they had left it years ago, its corrugated iron roofs gleaming in the sunlight, its one street green with feathery pepper trees along each side. The train pulled up, and they all tumbled out hastily; presumably the express wasted no more time upon Cunjee than in days gone by, when it was necessary to hustle out of the carriage, and to race along to the van, lest the whistle should sound and your trunks be whisked away somewhere down the line.

There were many people on the platform, and, wonderful to relate, a band was playing--Home Sweet Home; a little band, some of its musicians still in the ap.r.o.ns in which they had rushed from their shop duties; with instruments few and poor, and with not much training, so that the cornet was apt to be half a bar ahead of the euphonium. The Lintons had heard many bands since they had been away, and some had played before the King himself; but no music had ever gripped at their heartstrings like the music of the little backblocks band that stood on the gravelled platform of Cunjee and played to welcome them home.

Suddenly, as they stood bewildered, there seemed people all round them; kindly, homely faces, gripping their hands, shouting greetings. Evans, the manager of Billabong, showed a delighted face for a moment, said, "Luggage in the van. I'll see to it; don't you bother," and was gone.

Little Dr. Anderson and his wife, friends of long years, were trying to shake hands with all four at once. They were the centre of an excited little crowd--and found it hard to believe that it was really for them.

The train roared away, unnoticed, and the station-master and the porter ran up to add their voices to the chorus. Somehow they were outside the station, gently propelled; and there was a great arch of gum leaves, with a huge WELCOME in red letters, and beneath it were the shire president and his councillors, and other weighty men, all with speeches ready. But the speeches did not come to much, for the shire president had lads himself who had gone to the war, and a lump came in his throat as he looked at the tall boys from Billabong, whom he had known as little children; so that half the fine things he had prepared were never said--which did not matter, since he had it all written out and gave it to the reporter of the local paper afterwards! Something of speech-making there undoubtedly was, but no one could have told you much about it--and suddenly it ended in some one calling for "Three cheers!"

which every one gave with a will, while the band played that they were Jolly Good Fellows--and some of the band cheered while they played, with very curious results. Then David Linton tried to speak, and that was a failure also, as far as eloquence went; but n.o.body seemed to mind. So, between hand grips and cheers, they made their way through the welcome of Cunjee to where the big double buggy of Billabong stood, with three fidgeting brown horses, each held by a volunteer. Beyond that was the carry-all of the bush; an express wagon, with a grinning black boy at the horses' heads--and Norah went to him with outstretched hands.

"Why, Billy!" she said.

Billy's grin expanded in a perfectly reckless fashion.

"Plenty glad!" he stammered--and thereby doubled his usual output of words.

Willing hands were tossing their luggage into the wagon--unfamiliar luggage to Cunjee, with its jumble of ship labels, Continental hotel brands, and the names of towns all over England, Ireland and Scotland.

There were battered tin uniform cases of Jim and Wally's, bearing their rank and regiment in half effaced letters: "Major J. Linton"; "Captain W. Meadows"--it was hard to realize that they belonged to the two merry-faced boys, who did not seem much changed from the days when Cunjee had seen them arrive light-heartedly from school. Mr. Linton ran his eye over the pile, p.r.o.nouncing it complete. Then Evans was at his side.

"The motor you sent is ready at the garage in the township if you want it," he said. "But you wired that I was to bring the buggy."

"I did," said David Linton, with a slow smile. "I suppose for convenience sake we'll have to shake down to using the motor. But I drove the old buggy away from Billabong, and I'll drive home now. Jump in, children."

He gathered up the reins, sitting, erect and spare, with one foot on the brake, while the brown horses plunged impatiently, and the volunteers found their work cut out in holding them. Norah was by him, Evans on her other hand; Jim and Wally "tumbled up" into the back seat, as they had done so many times. David Linton looked down at the crowd below.

"Thank you all again," he said. "We'll see you soon--it's not good-bye now, only 'so-long.' Let 'em go, boys."

The volunteers sprang back, thankfully. The browns stood on their hind legs for a moment, endeavouring to tie themselves in knots; then the whip spoke, and they came to earth, straightened themselves out with a flying plunge, and wheeled out of the station yard and up the street. Behind them cheers broke out afresh, and the band blared once more--which acted as a further spur to the horses; they were pulling double as the high buggy flashed along the street, where every house and every shop showed smiling faces, and handkerchiefs waved in welcome. So they pa.s.sed through Cunjee, and wheeled to the right towards the open country--the country that meant Billabong.

There were seventeen miles of road ahead, but the browns made little of them. They had come into the township the evening before, and had done nothing since but eat the hotel oats and wish to be out of a close stable and back in their own free paddocks. They took the hills at a swift, effortless trot, and on the down slopes broke into a hand-gallop; light-hearted, but conscious all the time of the hand on the reins, that was as steel, yet light as a feather upon a tender mouth. They danced merrily to one side when they met a motor or a hawker's van with flapping cover; when the buggy rattled over a bridge they plainly regarded the drumming of their own hoofs as the last trump, and fled wildly for a few hundred yards, before realizing that nothing was really going to happen to them. But the miles fled under their swift feet. The trim villas near the township gave place to scattered farms. These in their turn became further and further apart, and then they entered a wide belt of timber, ragged and wind-swept gums, with dense undergrowth of dogwood and bracken fern. The metalled road gave place to a hard, earthern track, on which the spinning tyres made no sound; it curved in and out among the trees, which met overhead and cast upon it a waving pattern of shadows. Grim things had once happened to Norah in this belt of trees, and the past came back to her as she looked at its gloomy recesses again.

They were all silent. There had been few questions to ask of Evans, a few to be answered; then speech fled from them and the old spell of the country held them in its power. Every yard was familiar; every little bridge, every culvert, every quaint old skeleton tree or dead grey log.

Here Jim's pony had bolted at sight of an Indian hawker, in days long gone, and had ended by putting his foot into a hole and turning a somersault, shooting Jim into a well-grown clump of nettles. Here Norah had dropped her whip when riding alone, and her fractious young mare had succeeded in pulling away when she dismounted, and had promptly departed post-haste for home; leaving her wrathful owner to follow as she might.

A pa.s.sing bullock-wagon had given her a lift, and the somewhat anxious rescue party, setting out from Billabong, had met its youthful mistress, bruised from much b.u.mping, but otherwise cheerful, progressing in slow majesty towards its gates. Here--but the memories were legion, even to the girl and the two boys. And David Linton's went further back, to the day when he had first driven Norah's mother over the Billabong track; little and dainty and merry, while he had been as always, silent, but unspeakably proud of her. The little mother's grave had long been green, and the world had turned topsy-turvy since then, but the old track was the same, and the memory, and the pride, were no less clear.

They emerged from the timber at last, and spun across a wide plain, scattered with clumps of gum-trees. Then another belt of bush, a narrow one this time; and they came out within view of a great park-like paddock where Shorthorn bullocks, knee-deep in gra.s.s, scarcely moved aside as the buggy spun past, with the browns pulling hard. The track ran near the fence, and turned in at a big white gate glistening with new paint. It stood wide open, and beside it was a man on a splendid bay horse.

"There's Murty, and he's on Garryowen," spoke Jim quickly. "The old brick!"

"I guess if anyone else had wanted to open the gate for you to-day, he'd have had to fight Murty for the job," said Evans. "And Garryowen's been groomed till he turns pale at the sight of a brush, Great horse he's made, Mr. Jim."

"He's all that," said his owner, leaning out to view him better, with his eyes shining. He raised his voice in a shout as they swung in through the gateway. "Good for you, Murty! Hurroo!"

"Hurroo for ye all!" said Murty, and found to his amazement that his voice was shaky. "Ah, don't shtop, sir, they're all waitin' on ye. I'll be up as soon as ye."

Norah had tried to speak, and had found that she had no voice at all.

She could only smile at him, tremulously--and be sure the Irishman did not fail to catch the smile. Then, as they dashed up the paddock, her hand sought for her father's knee under the rug, in the little gesture that had been hers from babyhood. The track curved round a grove of great pines, and suddenly they were within sight of Billabong homestead, red-walled and red-roofed, nestled in the deep green of its trees.