my mistakes."

"You aren't supposed to know anything about cattle and things like
that," said Norah. "And when it comes to the house side, I don't think
you'll find I can teach you much--if anyone brought up to know French
cooking and French housekeeping has much to learn from a backblocks
Australian, I'll be surprised."

"In fact," said Mr. Linton, "I should think that the lessons will
generally end in the students of domestic economy fleeing forth upon
horses and studying how to deal with beef--on the hoof. Don't you,
Wally?"

"Rather," said Wally. "And Brownie will wash up after them, and say,
'Bless their hearts, why would they stay in a hot kitchen!' And so poor
old Bob will go down the road to ruin!"

"It's a jolly prospect," said Bob placidly. "I think we'll knock a good
deal of fun out of it!"

They trooped out in a body presently on their preliminary voyage
of discovery; touring the house itself, with its big rooms and wide
corridors, and the broad balconies that ran round three sides, from
which you looked far across the run--miles of rolling plains, dotted
with trees and clumps of timber, and merging into a far line of low,
scrub-grown hills. Then outside, and to the stables--a massive red brick
pile, creeper-covered, where Monarch and Garryowen, and Bosun, and the
buggy ponies, looked placidly from their loose boxes, and asked for--and
got--apples from Jim's pockets. Tommy even made her way up the steep
ladder to the loft that ran the whole length of the stables--big enough
for the men's yearly dance, but just now crammed with fragrant oaten
hay. She wanted to see everything, and chatted away in her eager,
half-French fashion, like a happy child.

"It is so lovely to be here," she told Norah later, when the keen
evening wind had driven them indoors from a tour of the garden. She was
kneeling on the floor of her bedroom, unpacking her trunk, while Norah
perched on the end of the bed. "You see, I am no longer afraid; and I
have always been afraid since Aunt Margaret died. In Lancaster Gate I
was afraid all the time, especially when I was planning to run away.
Then, on the ship, though every one was so kind, the big, unknown
country was like a wall of Fear ahead; even in Melbourne everything
seemed uncertain, doubtful. But now, quite suddenly, it is all right. I
just know we shall get along quite well."

"Why, of course you will," Norah said, laughing down at the earnest
face. "You're the kind of peop