But he started in with this taking-up land business, so he thought he'd try an easy way to get through with it.
"I could take up land on my own account now if you sent a few hundred pounds for that purpose per Mr. George. He would pay the deposit and arrange it for me. I have my eye on one or two improved farms falling idle shortly down this Gum Valley district, which is very flourishing. When they fall vacant on account of settlers dropping them, they can be picked up very cheap.
"I hope you are quite well, as I am at present
Jack spent his sixpence on this important document, and forgot all about it. And in the dead end of the hot summer, just in the nick of time, he got his answer:
Sea View Terrace, Bournemouth. 2. 2. '83,
"Thank you for your most comprehensive letter of 30/11/82. It is quite impossible for me to raise several hundreds of pounds, or for the matter of that, one hundred pounds, in this offhand manner. I don't want to be hard on you, but we want you to be independent as soon as possible. We have so many expenses, and I have no intention of sinking funds in the virgin Australian wild, at any rate until I see a way clear to getting some return for my money, in some form of safe interest accruing to you at my death.--You must not expect to run before you can walk. Stay where you are and learn what you can till your year is up, and then we will see about a jackeroo's job, at which your mother tells me you will earn £1. a week, instead of our having to pay it for you.
But this is running ahead.--It is not yet Christmas, 1882.
It was a red hot Christmas that year--'ot, 'ot, 'ot, all day long. Good Lord, how hot it was!--till blessed evening. Sundown brought blessings in its trail. After six o'clock you would sense the breeze coming from the sea. Whispering, sighing, hesitating. Then puff! there it was. Delicious, sweet, it seemed to save one's life.
It had been splendid out back, but it was nice to get home again and sit down to regular meals, have clean clothes and sheets to one's bed. To have your ironing and cooking done for you, and sit down to dinner at a big table with fresh, hailstorm-patterned tablecloth on it. There was a sense almost of glory in a big, white, glossy, hailstorm table-cloth. It lifted you up.