They were sitting on little green chairs in Hyde Park. Not far off swirled the traffic of Piccadilly; glancing across to Hyde Park Corner, they could see the great red motor-'buses, meeting, halting, and then rocking away in different directions, hooting as they fled. The roar of London was in their ears.

Billabong homestead lay calm and peaceful in the slanting rays of the sum that crept down the western sky. The red roofs were half hidden in the surrounding trees-pine and box and mighty blue gums towering above the tenderer green of the orchard, and the wide-flung tendrils of the Virginia creeper that was pushing slender fingers over the old walls. If you came nearer, you found how the garden rioted in colour under the touch of early summer, from the crimson rambler round the eastern bay window to the "Bonfire" salvia blazing in masses on the lawn; but from the paddocks all that could be...

Norah's home was on a big station in the north of Victoria-so large that you could almost, in her own phrase, "ride all day and never see any one you didn't want to see"; which was a great advantage in Norah's eyes. Not that Billabong Station ever seemed to the little girl a place that you needed to praise in any way. It occupied so very modest a position as the loveliest part of the world

"Do the beastly old map yourself, if you want it. I shan't, anyhow " "Wilfred " "Aw, Wil-fred " The boy at the end of the schoolroom table, red-haired, snub-nosed and defiant, mimicked the protesting tone. "I've done it once, and I'm blessed if I do it again." "No one would dream that it was ever meant for Africa." The young teacher glanced at the scrawled and blotted map before her. "It-it doesn't look like anything earthly. You must do it again, Wilfred." "Don't you, Wilf." Wilfred's sister leaned back in her chair, tilting it on its hind legs. "You have nothing to do with Wilfred's work,...