talk, only its condition
belies him. Oh, they're bricks, all right. Only I don't seem as if I
were standing squarely on my own feet."

"I don't think we could expect to, just yet," said Tommy pondering. "And
if they have helped us, Bobby, you can see they have loved doing it. It
would be ungracious for us not to take such help--given as it has been."

"Yes, of course," Bob answered and squared his shoulders. "Well,
I'm going to work like fury. The only thing I can do now is not to
disappoint them. I feel an awful new-chum, Tommy, but I've got to make
good."

"Why, of course you're going to," she said, slipping a hand through his
arm. "Jim wouldn't let you make mistakes; and the land is good, and
even if we strike a bad season, there's always the creek--we'll never be
without water, Jim says. And we're going to have the jolliest home--it's
that now, and we're going to make it better."

"It's certainly that now," Bob said. "I just can't believe it's ours.
Come and prowl round, old girl."

They prowled round in the dusk; up and down the garden paths by the
nodding daffodils, out round the sheds and the pigsties, and so down
to where the creek rippled and murmured in the gloom, flowing through
paddocks that, on either side, were their own. Memories of war and of
gloomy London fell away from them; only the bright present and a future
yet more bright filled them; and there was no loneliness, since all
the big new country had smiled to them and stretched out hands of
friendliness. They came back slowly to their house, arm in arm; two
young things, like shadows in the gloom, but certain in their own minds
that they could conquer Australia.

Bob lit the hanging lamp in the little sitting-room, and looked round
him proudly. A photograph caught his eye; a large group at his Surrey
Aerodrome, young officers clustered round a bi-plane that had just
landed.

"Poor chaps," he said, and stared at them. "Most of 'em don't know yet
that there's anything better in the world than flying."

"But they've never met merino sheep," said Tommy solemnly.

CHAPTER XIV

THE CUNJEE RACES

"Who's going to the races?" demanded Jim.

He had ridden over to the creek alone, and Tommy had come to the garden
gate to greet him, since the young horse he was riding firmly declined
to be tied up. It was a very hot morning in Christmas week. Tommy was in
a blue print overall, and her face was flushed, her hair lying in little
damp rings o