Many a fellow would starve on it. _I'm_ going to make my fortune with
it."

They were the words one of his heroes had spoken, and sounded splendid
to both.

"I've sixpence-halfpenny," said Betty, and unclosed her little brown
hand for a second. "That's all!"

They walked on. In front of them and behind ran the dusty road, like a
red line dividing a still bush world. Overhead was a tender sky, grey
stealing shyly away to give place to a soft still blue. Already the
daylight was wakening others than these foolish barefooted waifs. Here
and there a frog uttered its protest against, mayhap, the water it had
discovered, or been born to; the locusts lustily prophesied a hot day.
Occasionally an industrious rabbit travelled at express speed from the
world on one side of the red road to the world on the other. And above
all this bustle and business and frivolity rang the brazen laugh of a
company of kookaburras, who were answering each other from every corner
of the bush.

After some little travelling the fortune seekers came upon a cottage
standing alone in a small bush-clearing on their right. Three cows stood
chewing their cud, and waiting to be milked, a scattering of fowls was
shaking off dull sleep, and making no little ado about it, and near the
door a shock-headed youth was rubbing both eyes with both hands.

Betty and John walked on. These signs of awakening life roused them to a
livelier sense of being alive.

Yet a little further and they came to what Betty always called a
"calico" cottage, which is to say, a cottage made of scrim, and
white-washed. Windows belonged to it, and a door, and a garden enclosed
by a brushwood fence.

"Let's peep in the gate," said Betty, "it's such a _sweet_ little
house."

"Wait till you see the house _I_ mean to have," quoth John.

But Betty preferred to peep in then. She went close to the half-open
gate and popped in her head.

Inside the gate was a garden, and all its beds were defined by upended
stout bottles--weedless, sweet-scented beds wherein grew such blooms as
daisies, and violets, stocks, sweetpeas, sweet williams, lad's love and
mignonette.

"Oh!" said Betty. "Oh--just smell! just put your head in for a minute,
John."

But John was for "pushing on," and getting to Sydney to make his
shilling two.

While they were parleying, a man came round the corner of the "sweet
little house," and his eyes fell on the bonneted maiden.

"Hullo!" he exclaimed, "and who's