ots were like compressed bouquets; the brilliant,
graceful, and exquisitely perfumed pink oleanders grew wild in the
fields; and altogether the vale of melons had graduated to a valley of
flowers.

The days had stretched out so that the mail from the far West trundled
down the mountains in time to cross the queer old bridge across the
Noonoon at daybreak, and the first beams of morning turned its windows
to gold as the waking flowers were lifting their dew-drenched heads
and the soft white mists were dispersing themselves betimes from the
plains dotted with ramshackle little homes and cut into squares by
barbed-wire fences. The weather had warmed, so that the fashionables'
week-end exit to the cool Blue Mountains had begun; and the youngsters
near the railway line sometimes left their play and stood agape in the
soft twilight to watch the governor's car, painted in a strikingly
different colour to all the others and emblazoned with the British
coat of arms, go by.

Uncle Jake, a hired man, and Andrew were very busy on the farm, and we
none the less engaged in the house, where every article of furniture
was made a receptacle for drapery and haberdashery, and where the
wedding was the only subject. It so often gave Andrew the "pip" that
his constitution must have been seriously impaired by such frequent
attacks of this complaint.

In those days Dawn was too engrossed to take me for drives, and Ernest
too occupied to pull me on the historic stretch of water running like
the moats of old beside his lady's castle, so that Ada Grosvenor, in
her office of doing good to all with whom she came in contact, stepped
into the breach, and sought to aid my recovery by taking me for gentle
exercise.

It was one day when we had driven east from Noonoon that she
remarked--

"It's a wonder that Mr Breslaw would care for Dawn's style when he
moves in such a smart set. She is a handsome girl, which covers a
multitude of sins in that respect, but still she is very downright,
and--and, well, doesn't quite conform to the rules of refinement."

I only smiled, and waited till the pony's head was turned for home,
when I covered the necessity for reply by admiring the incomparable
panorama before us. From the altitude we had reached on the Sydney
road, we could see above the unbroken line of the horizon west from
Noonoon town, and the Blue Australian Mountains stretched across the
view in an endless succession of round-topped peaks painted