for the scent of the gum trees coming drifting in through
the open window, for the long, lonely plains where grazing cattle raised
lazy eyes to look at the roaring engine, or horses flung up nervous
heads and went racing away across the grass--more for the fun of it than
from fear. The gum trees called to her, beckoned to her; she forgot the
smooth perfection of the English landscape as she feasted her eyes on
the dear, untidy trees, whose dangling strips of bark seemed to wave to
her in greeting, telling her she was coming home. They passed a great
team of working bullocks in a wagon loaded with an enormous tree trunk;
twenty-four monsters, roan and red and speckled, with a great pair of
polled Angus in the lead; they plodded along in their own dust, their
driver beside them with his immense whip over his shoulder. Norah
pointed them out to the others with a quick exclamation, and Jim and
Wally came to look out from her window.

"By Jove, what a team!" said Jim. "Well, just at this moment I'd rather
see those fellows than the meet of the Coaching Club in Hyde Park--and I
had a private idea that that was the finest sight in the world!"

"Aren't you a jungly animal!" quoth Wally.

"Rather--just now," Jim rejoined. "Some day, I suppose, I'll be glad to
go back to London, and look at it all again. But just now there doesn't
seem to be anything to touch a fellow's own country--and that team of
old sloggers there is just a bit of it. Isn't it, old Nor?" She nodded
up at him; there was no need of words.

The morning was drawing towards noon when they came in sight of their
own little station: Cunjee, looking just as they had left it years ago,
its corrugated iron roofs gleaming in the sunlight, its one street green
with feathery pepper trees along each side. The train pulled up, and
they all tumbled out hastily; presumably the express wasted no more time
upon Cunjee than in days gone by, when it was necessary to hustle out
of the carriage, and to race along to the van, lest the whistle should
sound and your trunks be whisked away somewhere down the line.

There were many people on the platform, and, wonderful to relate, a band
was playing--Home Sweet Home; a little band, some of its musicians still
in the aprons in which they had rushed from their shop duties; with
instruments few and poor, and with not much training, so that the cornet
was apt to be half a bar ahead of the euphonium. The Lintons had heard
many bands sin