her of watermelons, half-hidden by peaches and
pomegranates, the whole heaped over by a confusion of ruby cherries
(oh, for Lance to paint it!) Are you hungry, though? If so, here is a
mould of potted-head and a cold wild duck, while, on the sideboard, I
see a bottle of pale ale. My brother, let us breakfast in Scotland,
lunch in Australia, and dine in France, till our lives' end.

And the banquet being over, she said, as pleasantly as possible, "Now,
I know you want to smoke in the verandah. For my part, I should like to
bring my work there and sit with you, but, if you had rather not have
me, you have only to say that 'you could not think,' &c. &c., and I
will obediently take myself off."

But Sam didn't say that. He said that he couldn't conceive anything
more delightful, if she was quite sure she did not mind.

Not she, indeed! So she brought her work out, and they sat together. A
cool wind came up, bending the flowers, swinging the creepers to and
fro, and raising a rushing sound, like the sea, from the distant
forest. The magpie having been down the garden when the wind came on,
and having been blown over, soon joined them in a very captious frame
of mind; and, when Alice dropped a ball of red worsted, he seized it as
lawful prize, and away in the house with a hop and a flutter. So both
Sam and Alice had to go after him, and hunt him under the sofa, and the
bird, finding that he must yield, dropped the ball suddenly, and gave
Sam two vicious digs on the fingers to remember him by. But when Alice
just touched his hand in taking it from him, he wished it had been a
whipsnake instead of a magpie.

So the ball of worsted was recovered, and they sat down again. He
watched her nimble fingers on the delicate embroidery; he glanced at
her quiet face and down-turned eyelids, wondering who she was thinking
of. Suddenly she raised her eyes and caught him in the fact. You could
not swear she blushed; it might only be a trifling reflection from one
of the red China roses that hung between her and the sun; yet, when she
spoke, it was not quite with her usual self-possession; a little
hurriedly perhaps.

"Are you going to be a soldier, as your father was?"

Sam had thought for an instant of saying "yes," and then to prove his
words true of going to Sydney, and enlisting in the "Half Hundred."
Truth, however, prompting him to say "no," he compromised the matter by
saying he had not thought of it.

"I am rather glad of tha