the heaps of refuse mullock that showed where
shafts had been sunk. A good many years ago, Bridget was told, there
had been a rush to the place, but the gold field turned out not so good
as had been expected, and it was only lately that the discovery of a
payable reef had brought the digging population back again. From one
direction came the whirr of machinery, and there was in the same
quarter a collection of white tents and roughly put up humpeys.
Otherwise, the township consisted of a long dusty street cutting the
sandy plain and, out of the two score or so of zinc-roofed buildings,
twenty were public houses.

Lady Bridget had been very silent all day. To Colin's anxious enquiries
she answered that it was enough to take in so many new impressions
without talking about them. Through the crude blur of these impressions
her husband stood out definitely, a dominant influence. She seemed to
be only now beginning to feel his dominance. Yet all the time, she
could not get away from the sense of living in some fantastic dream--an
Edward Lear nonsense dream. The sight of the kangaroos in the Bush
brought a particular rhyme of her childhood to her mind. She half said,
half sang it to an improvised tune:

'Said the Duck to the Kangaroo,
"Good gracious! how you hop!
Over the fields and water too,
As if you never would stop!"'

She caught her husband looking at her in a fascinated, puzzled way, and
paused and gave him her funny little smile.

'That's a very pretty song,' he said. 'But I can't make out what it
means. What is it about a duck or a kangaroo? They're nonsense words,
aren't they?'

'Nonsense--oh yes, frightful nonsense. Only it struck me that there's
sometimes a lot of truth in nonsense. Listen now,' and she went on:

'"My life is a bore in this nasty pond,
And I long to go out in the world beyond.
I wish I could hop like you!"
Said the Duck to the Kangaroo.'

He still looked puzzled--but adoring.

'You've got no sense of humour,' she said, 'Don't you see that you and
I are as incongruous as the duck and the kangaroo?'

'That is so,' he answered gravely. 'But I'll be a kangaroo with
pleasure if it makes the Bush more attractive to you.'

She fell suddenly silent again, and sat gloomy and staring at the
endless procession of gum trees as the train lumbered on through that
fantastic forest, which made her think of all kinds of ridiculous
things. And she was conscious all the time of hi