he answered crookedly.
“That you may bet they do!” cried the son, with a laugh; but he went on delivering himself of the most discouraging prophecies touching the case in point. The girl would come out with false ideas; would prove too fine by half for plain people like themselves; and at the best was certain to expect much more than they could possibly give her.
“Well, as to that,” said the farmer, who thought himself lucky to have escaped a scolding for never having told an old friend how poor he was – “as to that, we can but give her the best we’ve got, with mebbe a little extra here and there, such as we wouldn’t have if we were by ourselves. The eggs ‘ll be fresh, at any rate, and I think that she’ll like her sheets, for your mother is getting out them ‘at we brought with us from Home in ‘51. There was just two pairs, and she’s had ‘em laid by in lavender ever since. We can give her a good cup o’ tea, an’ all; and you can take her out ‘possum-shooting, John William, and teach her how to ride. Yes, we’ll make a regular bush-girl of her in a month, and send her back to Yorkshire the picture of health; though as yet I’m not very clear what’s been the matter with her. But if she takes after her parents ever so little she’ll see that we’re doing our best, and that’ll be good enough for any child of theirs.”
From such a shabby waistcoat pocket Mr. Tees-dale took so handsome a gold watch, it was like a ring on a beggar’s finger; and he fondled it between his worn hands, but without a word.
“Mr. Oliver gave you that watch, didn’t he, father?” Arabella said, watching him.
“He did, my dear,” said the old man proudly. “He came and saw us off at the Docks, and he gave me the watch on board, just as we were saying good-bye; and he gave your mother a gold brooch which neither of you have ever seen, for I’ve never known her wear it myself.”
Arabella said she had seen it.
“Now his watch,” continued Mr. Teesdale, “has hardly ever left my pocket – save to go under my pillow – since he put it in my hands on July 3, 1851. Here’s the date and our initials inside the case; but you’ve seen them before. Ay, but there are few who came out in ‘51 – and stopped out – who have done as poorly as me. The day after we dropped anchor in Hobson’s Bay there wasn’t a living soul aboard our ship; captain, mates, passengers and crew, all gone to the diggings. Every man Jack but me! It was just before you were born, John William, and I wasn’t going. It may have been a mistake, but the Lord knows best. To be sure, we had our hard times when the diggers were coming into Melbourne and shoeing their horses with gold, and filling buckets with champagne, and standing by with a pannikin to make everybody drink that passed; if you wouldn’t, you’d got to take off your coat and show why. I remember one of them offering me a hundred pounds for this very watch, and precious hard up I was, but I wouldn’t take it, not I, though I didn’t refuse a sovereign for telling him the time. Ay, sovereigns were the pennies of them days; not that I fingered many; but I never got so poor as to part with Mr. Oliver’s watch, and you never must either, John William, when it’s yours. Ay, ay,” chuckled Mr. Teesdale, as he snapped-to the case and replaced the watch in his pocket, “and it’s gone like a book for over thirty years, with nothing worse than a cleaning the whole time.”
“You must mind and tell that to Miriam, father,” said Arabella, smiling.
“I must so. Ah, my dear, I shall have two daughters, not one, and you’ll have a sister while Miriam is here.”
“That depends what Miriam is like,” said John William, getting up from the sofa with a Hugh and going back idly to the little room and his cleaned gun.
“I know what she will be like,” said Arabella, placing the group in front of her on the table. “She will be delicate and fair, and rather small; and I shall have to show her everything, and take tremendous care of her.”
“I wonder if she’ll have her mother’s hazel eyes and gentle voice?” mused the farmer aloud, with his eyes on their way back to the Dandenong Ranges.
“I should like her to take after her mother; she was one of the gentlest little women that ever I knew, was Mrs. Oliver, and I never clapped eyes – ”
The speaker suddenly turned his head; there had been a step in the verandah, and some person had passed the window too quick for recognition.
“Who was that?” said Mr. Teesdale.
“I hardly saw,” said Arabella, pushing back her chair. “It was a woman.”
“And now she’s knocking! Run and see who it is, my dear.”
Arabella rose and ran. Then followed such an outcry in the passage that Mr. Teesdale rose also. He was on his legs in time to see the door flung wide open, and the excited eyes of Arabella reaching over the shoulder of the tall young woman whom she was pushing into the room.
“Here is Miriam,” she cried. “Here’s Miriam found her way out all by herself!”
CHAPTER II. – A BAD BEGINNING
At the sound of the voices outside, John William, for his part, had slipped behind the gun-room door; but he had the presence of mind not to shut it quite, and this enabled him to peer through the crack and take deliberate stock of the fair visitant.
She was a well-built young woman, with a bold, free carriage and a very daring smile. That was John William’s first impression when he came to think of it in words a little later. His eyes then fastened upon her hair. The poor colour of her face and lips did not strike him at the time any more than the smudges under the merry eyes. The common stamp of the regular features never struck him at all, for of such matters old Mr. Teesdale himself was hardly a judge; but the girl’s hair took John William’s fancy on the spot. It was the most wonderful hair: red, and yet beautiful. There was plenty of it to be seen, too, for the straw hat that hid the rest had a backward tilt to it, while an exuberant fringe came down within an inch of the light eyebrows. John William could have borne it lower still. He watched and listened with a smile upon his own hairy visage, of which he was totally unaware.
“So this is my old friend’s daughter!” the farmer had cried out.
“And you’re Mr. Scarsdale, are you?” answered the girl, between fits of intermittent, almost hysterical laughter.
“Eh? Yes, yes; I’m Mr. Teesdale, and this is my daughter Arabella. You are to be sisters, you two.”
The visitor turned to Arabella and gave her a sounding kiss upon the lips.
“And mayn’t I have one too?” old Teesdale asked. “I’m that glad to see you, my dear, and you know you’re to look upon me like a father as long as you stay in Australia. Thank you, Miriam. Now I feel as if you’d been here a week already!”
Mr. Teesdale had received as prompt and as hearty a kiss as his daughter before him.
“Mrs. Teesdale is busy, but she’ll come directly,” he went on to explain. “Do you know what she’s doing? She’s getting your room ready, Miriam. We knew that you had landed, and I’ve spent the whole day hunting for you in town. Just to think that you should have come out by yourself after all! But our John William was here a minute ago. John William, what are you doing?”
“Cleaning my gun,” said the young man, coming from behind his door, greasy rag in hand.
“Nay, come! You finished that job long ago. Come and shake hands with Miriam. Look, here she is, safe and sound, and come out all by herself!”
“I’m
