Cameron was driving, and mechanically turned the horse’s head at the place where he had always turned for the sliprails of his selection.
He turned an astonished glance at Bart, but the boy’s eyes only danced.
’I’ll get down and open the gate,’ he said demurely, and jumped down while his father stared at the neat white gate with The Rosery painted on in black letters. Could this be Dunks’ selection that stretched before the head of the horse that bore them slowly along? This the grey, dreary place that had cast its colour over the souls of those who looked at it. A drive ran up from the gate to the house, not a smooth, red gravelled drive by any means, but it was cleared and stumped now all its length and width, and went with pleasant windings between the trees.
A low white two-rail fence divided the bush and sheep ground from the land about the house; the small orchard showed freshly ploughed up and trenched between the trees; a vegetable garden was laid out, and the peas and beans were above the ground already. The flower-beds near the house were dug and weeded, as if they had been beds in the Botanical Gardens; and dahlias, little sunflowers, and cosmea of all shades made a gay mass of colour. The pixies’ hands had even attacked the cottage; Cameron himself had given it a coat of red paint that had much altered its forlorn aspect; these new hands had carried the coat of paint even over the dreary galvanised iron roof, had ’picked out’ the chimneys, and windows, and verandah-posts with white, added a seven-foot verandah all round, and knocked a French window into the walls here and there.
’Why,’ cried Challis, ’it’s the sweetest, darlingest little place I ever saw! Oh, I never want to go away from it again!’
Mrs. Cameron was looking with eyes full of pleased surprise.
’Why, Jim,’ she said, ’why, dearest, it is really very nice, very nice indeed, so peaceful-looking. You did not prepare me for anything like this.’
’I didn’t prepare myself,’ he began; but his wife’s hand was fluttering to the fastening of the sociable door, and her ears were no longer for him, for Hermie and Roly were running out to meet her.
Such a rushing into arms, such kissings, such a choking of laughter and tears! Mrs. Cameron held Hermie to her and from her, and to her again, and marvelled to find her almost a woman.