tes
of his family; and he provided Esther with a yellow-back--on
which was depicted a lady in a green dress fainting in the arms
of a gentleman attired in purple, and Meg with Mark Twain's "Jumping
Frog", because he had noticed a certain air of melancholy in her eyes
lately.

Then bells clanged and a whistle shrieked, porters flew wildly about,
and farewells were said, sadly or gaily as the case might be.

There was a woman crying: in a hopeless little way on the platform,
and a girl with sorrowful, loving eyes leaning out of a second-class
window towards her; there was a brown-faced squatter, in a tweed cap
and slippers, to whom the three-hundred-mile journey was little more
of an event than dining; and there was the young man going selecting,
and thinking England was little farther, seeing his wife and child
were waving a year's good-bye from the platform. There were sportsmen
going two hundred miles after quail and wallaby; and cars full of
ladies returning to the wilds after their yearly or half-yearly tilt
with society and fashion in Sydney; and there were the eight we are
interested in, clustering around the door and two windows, smiling
and waving cheerful good-byes to the Captain.

He did not look at all cast down as the train steamed fussily
away--indeed, he walked down the platform with almost a jaunty air as if
the prospect of two months bachelordom was not without its redeeming
points.

It was half-past six in the afternoon when they started, and they would
reach Curlewis, which was the nearest railway station to Yarrahappini,
about five the next morning. The expense of sleeping-berths had been
out of the question with so many of them; but in the rack with the bags
were several rolls of rugs and two or three air-pillows against the
weary hours. The idea of so many hours in the train had been delightful
to all the young ones; none of them but Judy had been a greater distance
than forty or fifty miles before, and it seemed perfectly fascinating
to think of rushing on and on through the blackness as well as the
daylight.

But long before ten o'clock a change came o'er the spirit of their
dreams. Nell and Baby had had a quarrel over the puffing out of the
air-cushions, and were too tired and cross to make it up again; Pip
had hit Bunty over the head for no ostensible reason, and received
two kicks in return; Judy's head ached, and the noise, was not calculated
to cure it; Meg had grown weary of sta