your words
struck me oddly, for, as a matter of fact, I have to go away, and
soon too."

Eustace glanced quickly at his mother, and the look in her eyes
made him forget the parcel too.

"Not far, Jack, I hope," she said.

"Rather, I'm afraid," was the answer. "I hope you won't mind being
left for a week or two."

"A week or two!" exclaimed Mrs. Orban in a tone that was
unmistakably disturbed.

"I can't do it in less," Mr. Orban went on. "I am obliged to go
down to Brisbane on business."

"To Brisbane!" Nesta cried. "O dad, couldn't you take us all with
you? It would be lovely!"

"If you will find the fares, young woman, I shall be delighted,"
said her father, pinching her ear. "The journey to Brisbane is
rather an expensive matter. I couldn't afford to take myself there
just for the fun of the thing."

"When must you go, Jack?" asked Mrs. Orban, trying hard to speak
steadily and naturally.

"Next week--as soon as possible, that is," Mr. Orban said; "and I
will get back just as quick as I can. You will be all right, dear.
I will tell Farley or Robertson to sleep up here in the house, and
you won't feel so lonely at night."

"Oh no, no," Mrs. Orban said, "don't do that. They have both got
their wives and families to look after. Eustace will be an
efficient man of the house and companion to his mummie--won't you,
son?"

"I'll do my best," Eustace said soberly.

To be quite honest, he was as startled as his mother at his
father's announcement; he did not like the idea at all. He had
caught that curious look in his mother's eyes, and it troubled him.

But Nesta was too much taken up with the thought of the parcel to
notice anything except the delay in opening it.

"Couldn't we go on?" she pleaded.

"Poor Nesta," said Mr. Orban, beginning to cut the sewing, "is it
getting beyond your patience altogether? Well, here goes then!"

Inside the American cloth was yet another wrapper, this time of
linen sewn up most carefully, and within that paper after paper.
The excitement grew more and more tense, till at last, when they
came to a series of neat packages, each with a label to say from
whom and to whom the gift was, every one except Becky was beyond
speaking point.

The joys that parcel contained were indescribable, because no child
born and bred in England could be made to understand how wonderful,
how undreamed of, how surprising were the most ordinary things to
those four Bush children. They lived rig