Bart was on Wilgandra Station to meet them—Bart, healthy-looking and sinewy, if thin; he wore white flannel trousers, a white linen coat, and a new straw hat with a new fly-veil attached. Mrs. Cameron had looked when her husband cried, ’There’s Bart,’ with eyes that expected to see an out-at-elbow lad, possibly barefoot, probably ill-developed. But there was nothing she would have changed.
’Of course they all wanted to come to meet you,’ the boy said, when the first glad greetings were over, and the great panting, shrieking train had become just a quiet black thread climbing the side of the next rise. ’But I didn’t want to crowd the buggy.’
’The buggy!’ his father said. ’I was just going into the hotel to get one. I’m glad you thought to order it.’
’It’s Mr. Stevenson’s,’ Bart said. ’He sent it down this morning for me to meet you in,’ and he led them with much satisfaction to the handsome roomy sociable he had in waiting. Their own solitary equipage, the shabby cart drawn by Tramby and driven by young Daly, was in readiness for the many boxes.
Once, in carrying the luggage to the cart, Bart and his father found themselves alone on the station for a moment. Bart gave a laughing glance from his father’s to his own apparel.
’Isn’t it a lark?’ he said. ’I feel quite shy of myself, don’t you?’
’Do the girls look nice?’ Cameron said anxiously.
’Spiffin,’ said Bart, ’and Miss Browne’s got a new dress, and even curled her hair. I say, have you told mother about Miss Browne?’
’We’ve—we’ve been tidying up a bit, dad. I think you’ll find it’s a bit—er—tidier.’ There was a flush on the boy’s cheek, a look of suppressed excitement in his eyes. ’Let’s get on now; the horse doesn’t like to stand, and everything’s in.’
They drove up the road that wound out of civilised Wilgandra away to parts where the bush took on its wild character again, and rolled either side of them in unbroken severity and loneliness for miles.
But it was early winter now, and the thankful land lay smiling and happy-eyed beneath a cooler sky. Even the newest clearings flaunted rich carpets of grass, green as grass only springs where a bush fire has purged the ground for it. The air was fragrant with the bush scents that rise after rain. A cool, quiet breeze swayed the boughs of the ocean-waste of trees, here and there it lifted the long string of warm-coloured bark—autumn’s royal rags—that hung from the silvered trunks.
