But before they had been in London six months the pleased Fates relieved them of their anxiety.
Next door to them in the pleasant home they had made was a widower, just getting over—and without overmuch difficulty—the loss of a wife who had insisted upon managing his very soul as well as his house, and his two children and his very respectable cheque-book.
His small ones were running wild—he noted the contrast between them and Floss and Roly, whom Miss Browne seemed now to manage so admirably. The intimacy increased; the change from his past, overruled existence to the companionship of this gentle lady-help, who deferred humbly to his opinions, and asked his advice, and was curiously grateful for the smallest attention, was such a restful novelty to him that he offered her his hand and heart and lonely little children forthwith.
And now that Fortune, so long harsh and uncompromising, had taken to flinging gifts at the family with unstinted hand, it did not leave Cameron himself out of its scheme of sudden generosity.
The picture of the ship had found its way safely from under Miss Browne’s bed at Wilgandra across the sea to the artist who painted in leafy Fontainebleau pictures the world was pleased to stand and look at long.
And the man’s artist-soul rose in recognition of the passion and strength that had gone forth into the brush that had worked so feverishly in that far-away bush township.
An important Paris exhibition was just coming on. He rushed up to the city with the canvas, and his influence got it in at the right time, and saw it well hung. The second day the exhibition was opened it sold for two hundred guineas, and the path Cameron had ached to walk on all his life was at last open to his feet.
The day had not dropped her burdens from the backs of these people for ever; it had merely strengthened weak shoulders with soldierly discipline, and readjusted the weight.
Bright days, sad days, separations, meetings, temptations, love, death, all would come along, as they always have done, as they always will.
For this is Life we fare upon, and not just a little journey to ask smooth ground for all the way.
_Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ltd., London and Aylesbury._