. He
had felled the youngest of the grass-trees, and was now chopping off
its green tuft. Soon he appeared, carrying a huge bunch of the coarse
blades of foliage, which he brought to the tent. With an odd mixture of
emotions, Lady Bridget watched her husband take the grass tops from the
black boy and spread them carefully on the floor of the tent, heaping
up and smoothing the mass into a bed, upon which he laid the oilskin
and then one of the blankets--they were new white blankets, fresh from
the store. After that, he set the cushions from the buggy, covering
them with the rug, at the head of the couch, making a bolster, and,
over that, the one she had had at her back.

'No down pillows or linen sheets allowed in a bush camp-out, my lady
Biddy,' he said with a laugh, a half timorous glance at his wife, but
her answering smile reassured him.

'You'll never sleep on a sweeter bed,' he said, sniffing the resinous
fragrance of the grass-tree tops. He would not let her help him with
the upper blankets when she wished to lend a hand.

'No, this camp is my own show. Go and look at the scenery until I've
got our wigwam in order.'

And she submissively obeyed.

Against the other side of the rock wall, the black boys had built a
second fire. The horses were hobbled and grazing along the green border
of the creek. The buggy propped up, was covered with a tarpaulin. The
pack-bags had disgorged their contents. A miscellaneous heap of camp
properties lay on the ground. And now, Cudgee's axe was at work again,
stripping a section of bark from a gum tree, for what purpose Lady
Bridget did not divine.

She walked down to the creek and stood among the rocks at its edge. She
had expected a rippling stream, and, to her disappointment, saw only a
broad strip of dry sand, along which Moongarr Bill was mooching, a
spade in his hand.

'What are we going to do for water?' she exclaimed.

'Dig for it, my ladyship,' answered Moongarr Bill. 'That's one of the
upside-down things in 'Stralia. Here's two of them--mighty queer, come
to think of it--the rivers that run underground and the cherries that
grow with their stones outside.'

Lady Bridget observed that she was already acquainted with that
oft-quoted botanical phenomenon. In her rides around Leichardt's Town
she had been shown and had tasted the disagreeable little orange berry
which has a hard green knob at the end of it and is, for some ironical
reason, called a cherry. She also