ousehold matters, and all that flower garden was her
special charge and delight.

Wednesday and Thursday of every week were holidays, and those two days
were spent by Billjim in roaming the country far and wide. Sometimes on
horseback, when a horse could be borrowed, but mostly on her own
well-formed feet.

She would wander off with a shovel and a dish into the scrub, and,
following up some gully all day, would return at night tired out and
happy, and generally with two or three grains of gold to show for her
day's work. Sometimes she would come back laden with some new orchid,
and this she would carefully fix in the garden in a position as similar
as possible to that in which she had found it, and usually it would
blossom there as if it were thankful at being so well cared for.

When Billjim wasn't engaged making her pocket-money, as she termed it,
her days would be spent with Jack L'Estrange.

Jack was a fine, strapping young fellow of twenty-three, and was doing
as well on the Newanga as any. Since the day he had snatched Billjim
(then a wee mite) from the jaws of an alligator, as Queensland folk will
insist upon calling their crocodile, he had been _l'ami de la maison_ at
the Bensons', and Billjim thought there was no one in the world like
him. He in return would do any mortal thing which that rather capricious
young lady desired.

One evening, when they were all sitting chatting round the fire in the
galley, Benson said:

"Don't you think, Jack, that Billjim ought to go to some decent school?
The missus and me of course ain't no scholars, but now that we can
afford it we'd like Billjim to learn proper, you know."

Jack looked at Billjim, who had nestled up closer to him during this
speech, and was on the point of answering in the negative, when less
selfish thoughts entered his head, and he replied:

"Well, Dick, much against my inclination, I must say that I think she
ought to go. You see," he continued, turning to Billjim and taking her
hand, "it's this way. We should all miss you, lass, very much, but it's
for your own good. You must know more than we here can teach you if you
wish to be any good to your father and mother."

Billjim nodded and looked at him, and Jack had to turn his eyes away and
speak to Mrs. Benson for fear of going back on his words.

"You see, Mrs. Benson," said Jack, "it wouldn't be for long, for Billjim
would learn very quickly with good teachers, and be of great use to you
whe