ich
courtesy extended to it. These huts had the inevitable roofs of
galvanised iron; these roofs duly expanded in the heat, and made the
little tin thunder that dwellers beneath them grow weary of hearing, the
warm world over. There were a few pine-trees between the buildings, and
the white palings of a well among the pines, and in the upper spaces a
broken but persistent horizon of salt-bush plains burning into the
blinding blue. In the Riverina you cannot escape these features: you may
have more pine-trees and less salt-bush; you may even get blue-bush and
cotton-bush, and an occasional mallee forest; but the plains will recur,
and the pines will mitigate the plains, and the dazzle and the scent of
them shall haunt you evermore, with that sound of the hot complaining
roofs, and the taste of tea from a pannikin and water from a water-bag.
These rude refinements were delights still in store for Moya Bethune,
who saw the bush as yet from a comfortable chair upon a cool verandah,
and could sing its praises with a clear conscience. Indeed, a real
enthusiasm glistened in her eyes. And the eyes of Moya happened to be
her chief perfection. But for once Rigden was not looking into them, and
his own were fixed in thought.

"There's the charm of novelty," he said. "That I can understand."

"If you knew how I revel in it--after Melbourne!"

"Yes, two days after!" said he. "But what about weeks, and months, and
years? Years of this verandah and those few pines!"

"We could cover in part of the verandah with trellis-work and creepers.
They would grow like wildfire in this heat, and I'm sure the owners
wouldn't mind."

"I should have to ask them. I should like to grow them inside as well,
to hide the papers."

"There are such things as pictures."

"They would make the furniture look worse."

"And there's such a thing as cretonne; and I'm promised a piano; and
there isn't so much of their furniture as to leave no room for a few of
our very own things. Besides, there's lots more they couldn't possibly
object to. Curtains. Mantel-borders. I'm getting ideas. You won't know
the place when I've had it in hand a week. Shall you mind?"

He did not hear the question.

"I don't know it as it is," he said; and indeed for Rigden it was
transformation enough to see Moya Bethune there in the delicious flesh,
her snowy frock glimmering coolly in the hot verandah, her fine eyes
shining through the dust of it like the gems they were.