"It's always the way," said Wally, in tones of melancholy. "Every fortune teller I ever saw told me that no one understood me."

"All fortune tellers say that, and that's why people think them so clever," said Tommy. "It's so soothing to think one is misunderstood. My stepmother always thought so. Did Bob tell you, Mr. Linton, that we had had letters from home?"

"No--from your people?"

"From Papa. The she-dragon didn't write. I think her words would have been too burning to put on paper. But Papa wrote a pretty decent letter--for him. He didn't speak of our letters from Liverpool--the notes we wrote from the hotel, saying we were leaving for Australia.

But he acknowledged Bob's letter from Melbourne, saying we were going up country under your wing, and actually wished us luck! Amazing, from Papa!"

"I think he's jolly glad we got away," Bob said.

"I think that's highly probable," said David Linton. "You'll write to him occasionally, won't you?"

"Oh, yes, I suppose so," Bob answered. "Sometimes I'm a bit sorry for him; it must be pretty awful to be always under the heel of a she-dragon. Oh, and there was a really fatherly sort of letter from old Mr. Clinton. He's an old brick; and he's quite pleased about our finding you--or you finding us. He was always a bit worried lest Tommy should feel lonesome in Australia."

"And not you?" Norah asked laughing.

"No, he didn't worry a bit about me; he merely hoped I'd be working too hard to notice lonesomeness. I think the old chap always was a bit doubtful that any fellow would get down to solid work after flying; he used to say the two things wouldn't agree. But you sent him a decent report of me, didn't you, sir?"

"Oh, yes--I wrote when you asked me, just after you bought this place,"

David Linton said. "Told him you were working like a cart-horse, which was no more than the truth, and that Tommy was serving her adopted country as a cook; and that I considered your prospects good. He'll have had that letter before now--and I suppose others from you."

"We wrote a few weeks ago--sent him a photograph of the house, and of Tommy on a horse, and Tommy told him all about our furniture," Bob chuckled. "I don't quite know how a staid old London lawyer will regard the furniture; he won't understand its beauty a bit. But he ought to be impressed with our stern regard for economy."

"He should," said Mr. Linton with a twinkle. "And I presume you mentioned the sheep?"

"As a matter of fact," said Tommy confidentially, "his letter was little but mutton. He described all his ewes in detail--"

"Colour of their eyes?" queried Wally.

"And their hair," nodded Tommy. "I never read anything so poetical. And any enthusiasm he had over went to the pigs and the Kelpie pup!"

"But what about the cows?" laughed Norah. "And the young bullocks?"

"Oh, he mentioned them. But cattle are just four-legged animals to Bob; they don't stir his soul like sheep and pigs. He couldn't write beautiful things about them. But when it comes to sheep, he just naturally turns into a poet!"

The object of these remarks helped himself serenely to cake.

"Go on," he nodded at his sister cheerfully. "Wait until my wool cheque comes in, and you want a new frock--then you'll speak respectfully of my little merinoes. And if you don't, you won't get the frock!"

"Why, I wouldn't disrespect them for anything," Tommy said. "I think they're lovely beasts. So graceful and agile. Will any of them come yet when you whistle, Bobby?"

"Are you going to put up with this sort of thing, Bob?" demanded Jim.

Bob smiled sweetly.

"I'm letting her have her head," he said confidently. "It's badly swelled just now, because she's got a house of her own--but you wait until she wants a new set of shelves, or a horse caught in a hurry so that she can tear over and find out from Norah how to cook something--then she'll come to heel. It's something in your climate, I think, because she was never so cheeky at home--meek was more the word to describe her."

"Meek!" said his sister indignantly. "Indeed, I never was meek in my life!"

"Indeed you were, and it was very becoming," Bob a.s.sured her. "Now you're more like a suffragette--" He stopped, staring. "Why, that's it!

It must be in the air! She knows she'll have the vote pretty soon!" He broke into laughter. "Glory! Fancy little Tommy with a vote!"

Tommy joined in the general mirth.

"I hadn't realized it," she said, "and I needn't bother for over eighteen months, anyhow. And I don't believe that any of you have ever voted, even if you are twenty-one--except Mr. Linton, of course; and you don't know a bit more about it than I do."

"Hear, hear!" said Wally. "I certainly don't, and neither does Jim. But when we do vote, it's going to be for the chap who'll let us go and dig our own coal out if there's a strike. That's sense; and it seems to me the only sensible thing I've ever heard of in politics!" A speech which manifested so unusual an amount of reflection in Wally that every one was spellbound, and professed inability to eat any more.

Bob and Tommy stood on the verandah to watch their visitors go; Mr.

Linton and Norah in the motor, while Jim and Wally rode. The merry shouts of farewell echoed through the gathering dusk.

"Bless them," said Tommy--"the dears. I don't believe we'd have a home now but for them, Bob."

"We certainly wouldn't," Bob answered. "And sometimes I feel as if they'd spoon-fed us. Look at all they've done for us--these months at Billabong and all they've taught us, and all the things that they've showered on us. We couldn't pay them back in twenty years."

"And they talk as if the favour were on their side," his sister said.

"There's the buggy they've lent us--Mr. Linton spent quite a long time in pointing out to me how desirable it was for them that we should use it, now that they have the car and don't need it. And the horses that apparently would have gone to rack and ruin from idleness if we hadn't come."

"And the cows that don't seem to have had any reason for existence except to supply us with milk," Bob said laughing; "and the farm machinery that never was really appreciated until immigrants came along--at least, you'd think so to hear Jim talk, only its condition belies him. Oh, they're bricks, all right. Only I don't seem as if I were standing squarely on my own feet."

"I don't think we could expect to, just yet," said Tommy pondering. "And if they have helped us, Bobby, you can see they have loved doing it. It would be ungracious for us not to take such help--given as it has been."

"Yes, of course," Bob answered and squared his shoulders. "Well, I'm going to work like fury. The only thing I can do now is not to disappoint them. I feel an awful new-chum, Tommy, but I've got to make good."

"Why, of course you're going to," she said, slipping a hand through his arm. "Jim wouldn't let you make mistakes; and the land is good, and even if we strike a bad season, there's always the creek--we'll never be without water, Jim says. And we're going to have the jolliest home--it's that now, and we're going to make it better."

"It's certainly that now," Bob said. "I just can't believe it's ours.

Come and prowl round, old girl."

They prowled round in the dusk; up and down the garden paths by the nodding daffodils, out round the sheds and the pigsties, and so down to where the creek rippled and murmured in the gloom, flowing through paddocks that, on either side, were their own. Memories of war and of gloomy London fell away from them; only the bright present and a future yet more bright filled them; and there was no loneliness, since all the big new country had smiled to them and stretched out hands of friendliness. They came back slowly to their house, arm in arm; two young things, like shadows in the gloom, but certain in their own minds that they could conquer Australia.

Bob lit the hanging lamp in the little sitting-room, and looked round him proudly. A photograph caught his eye; a large group at his Surrey Aerodrome, young officers cl.u.s.tered round a bi-plane that had just landed.

"Poor chaps," he said, and stared at them. "Most of 'em don't know yet that there's anything better in the world than flying."

"But they've never met merino sheep," said Tommy solemnly.

CHAPTER XIV

THE CUNJEE RACES

"Who's going to the races?" demanded Jim.

He had ridden over to the creek alone, and Tommy had come to the garden gate to greet him, since the young horse he was riding firmly declined to be tied up. It was a very hot morning in Christmas week. Tommy was in a blue print overall, and her face was flushed, her hair lying in little damp rings on her forehead. Jim, provokingly cool in riding breeches and white silk shirt, smiled down at her across the gate.