The voyage home! Of this momentous ‘trip,’ as it was called in light, almost sportive reference, the now successful, honoured, and wealthy Australian proprietor had often thought. But neither the means nor the opportunity for such a decisive movement had as yet been forthcoming. The children had been too young, the financial outlook too restricted, in his earlier married life. Not that he or his wife had any ardent desire to make the change. They were attached to their native land; the climate agreed with them—they were not sure that the rigorous seasons of the ancestral isle would suit the immature brood, in which were centred the hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows, of their daily life. It had been relegated by consent to the region of by and by, where so many of the fairy legends of childhood were to come true; and now, slowly, imperceptibly, yet not less surely, the years had flown. Those years which divide early manhood and womanhood from middle age had departed never to return.
The future—the ‘by and by’—which had loomed so far and mist-coloured in their early life, had been overtaken. It had become the present, to be felt and reckoned with. The children had grown up. Of the boys, one was at Cambridge, the other working hard to pass exams., and panting for the happy day when he should see his name gazetted for a commission in an Imperial cavalry regiment. Of the girls, younger by several years, Hermione, almost ready to ‘come out,’ as the Society phrase is; the others, school-girls, receiving daily tuition from governesses, music masters, teachers of drawing, singing, languages,—all the varied education which goes to equip the modern maiden for her place in the ranks of womanhood.
Now these young people had a natural ambition to ‘see the world.’ They had read widely, if not deeply, and were impatient to have tangible evidence of the historic glories of older lands. Of paintings and statuary their knowledge had been necessarily limited, although far from ordinary collections had been accessible in the galleries and museums of the metropolis in which they resided, and others which they had visited. Their artistic tastes, though not wholly unformed, were capable of higher development. They yearned for closer acquaintance with the capitals of the world—the ancient world. They ardently desired to behold Rome, Venice, Greece, Paris, Cairo. Reading was delightful. They could never be sufficiently grateful to their parents who had indulged their legitimate enthusiasm to the fullest amount possible to their opportunities. But, of course, it was not, could never be the same. They longed to stand upon the Bridge of Sighs, ‘a palace and a prison on each hand’; to watch ‘Old Tiber through a marble wilderness rise with her yellow waves’; to visit the Coliseum by moonlight; to stand on Mars Hill, and ‘yon tower-capped Acropolis, which seems the very clouds to kiss,’—in short, to view all sorts of instructive, entrancing places. After such experiences they did not care what happened. They would have seen everything worth seeing. They could no longer be classed as ‘mere colonials’—they would be citizens of the world—akin to the most enviable sections of English society. Mrs. Banneret, though with less enthusiasm, agreed in the main with her daughters. Time and circumstance were propitious. Who could tell whether so favourable a combination would remain unaltered?