ng girl's. Suppose--suppose I should not be quite all he thought me;
suppose he should have changed.

Why, Hope, you're smiling at my foolishness, but isn't that the way
every woman feels when she's in love; and I 'm in love still, after
three and thirty years, God help me, and a woman in the main is always
the same, whether her hair is golden, or whether it 's grey and she
hides it under a cap.

But this isn't telling you my story, is it, child?

Not that there's much to tell. You know Yanyilla. You know what a
station was like in the old days. They have been described over and over
again. But Yanyilla was always a nice place. A hundred and eighty miles
from Melbourne is a good way even now in these railway days, and it was
much further when we had to do the whole journey by Cobb's coach. Oh, we
were very much out of the world, and at first I used to feel lonely. My
father--well you know pretty well what kind of a man your grandfather
was, so it's no use my trying to gloss over his character--and your
grandmother, ah, my poor mother, I was always fond of my mother, but she
had a hard life, and it made her fretful and not much of a companion for
a young girl. She thought the world was a hard place for a woman to
live in, and the sooner I found it out and indulged in no vain hopes the
better for me. I thought then, rather vaguely to be sure, that she was
wrong, and I know it now. But she is dead long, long ago, and perhaps
she too knows it. Then there was my brother Ben, your father, Hope, he
was always a dear good boy, but he was so much younger than me, I don't
suppose he ever thoroughly understood it all.

The homestead was just on the slope where the hills ran down into the
plain country. Away to the west and north stretched the dull grey plains
far as the eye could see, and behind us to the east and south were the
ranges; dull and grey too, I used to think when first I went there,
but I changed my mind afterwards. When the sun shone he transformed all
things, and the sun shone very often in those days--he does so still
maybe, if only I could see with the same eyes--and I loved those ranges.
I liked to steal away on a hot day into the deep fern gullies, where the
tall green tree-ferns were high over my head, and the dainty maidenhair
grew among the rocks and stones at my feet. And someone else loved those
gullies too--it's all part of the story, dear, the same old story which
comes to every woman at least once in