He was not the only admirer—the Adonis of the field, Eachin Durward, a tall, handsome, grand-looking Highlander, was known to be devoted to her,—was well-off too,—would have left for Europe _via_ Cairo, and the East generally, if only she would deign to express a wish—a preference for any particular route. But she was dumb as the Sphinx.
As deaf also, to all entreaties of men, as she who sits by the Pyramids—sad, silent, awful in lonely sorrow—in wisdom unspeakable, in experience vast—in knowledge coeval with the æons, whose memorial—save of her, and the eternal pyramidal monuments—hath perished.
Eastward ho! Home again,—blessed word, thrice blessed reality. The hot desert blast—the dust—the heat—the swarming flies—the glaring sun at noon—the scarce less tyrannous heat at even,—all things that bore so hard on frail humanity—all left behind for a season! What a paradise of hope and joy seemed opening before the ‘happy pair,’ in truest re-adjusted sense of the word. And the calm, peaceful savour of all the best joys of life was heightened by the recurring thought that under all things there was the solid foundation of success—success undoubted—ungrudged—won by enterprise and work, a wide-spread treasure-house in which so many of the most honest toilers of earth were permitted, nay, invited to share.
With health assured—indeed benefited by recovery from the dread fever-grip—so rarely relaxed—it seemed apparent that he, Arnold Banneret, ‘never looked better,’ as his friends assured him, than on his return from the Golden West—that fateful Eldorado which numbered so many of the best and noblest of Australia’s—Britain’s—sons among the ‘unreturning brave.’
The voyage completed—the harbour—the haven par excellence of all fair havens, regained, the meeting on the wharf—of the entire family—wild with joy, and shouting all kinds of differing information, in one breath—all rosy with health and frantic with delight, may be left to be imagined by those home-returning parents of similar experiences. Nothing had gone wrong. The household had been discreetly, lovingly, capably managed in the absence of the high-contracting parties of the little state,—that state, when multiplied by thousands and ten thousands, which makes so much in valour, virtue, and stability, in the onward march of Empire.