her flag to one who might have swum
into her ken from another planet; for the real bush is as far from
Toorak and Hawthorn, and The Block in Collins Street, as it is from Hyde
Park Corner.

It may be that Moya saw both bush and bushman in the same rosy light. To
the impartial eye Rigden was merely the brick-red, blue-eyed type of
Anglo-Saxon: a transparent character, clean of body and mind, modest but
independent, easy-going in most things, immovable in others. But he had
been immovable about Moya, whose family at its worst had failed to
frighten or to drive him back one inch. She could have loved him for
that alone; as it was it settled her; for Moya was of age, and the
family had forthwith to make the best of her betrothal.

This they had done with a better grace than might have been expected,
for the Bethunes had fine blood in them, though some of its virtue had
been strained out of this particular branch. Moya none the less
continued to realise the disadvantages of belonging to a large family
when one wishes to form a family of two. And this reflection inspired
her next remark of any possible interest to the world.

"Do you know, dear, I'm quite glad you haven't got any people?"

Rigden smiled a little strangely.

"You know what I mean!" she cried.

"I know," he said. And the smile became his own.

"Of course I was thinking of my own people," explained Moya. "They can't
see beyond Toorak--unless there's something going on at Government
House. And I'm so tired of it all--wouldn't settle there now if they
paid me. So we're out of touch. Of course I would have loved any one
belonging to you; but they mightn't have thought so much of me."

If she was fishing it was an unsuccessful cast. Rigden had grown too
grave to make pretty speeches even to his betrothed.

"I wish you had known my mother," was all he said.

"So do I, dear, and your father too."

"Ah! I never knew him myself."

"Tell me about them," she coaxed, holding his sunburnt hand in one of
hers, and stroking it with the other. She was not very inquisitive on
the subject herself. But she happened to have heard much of it at home,
and it was disagreeable not to be in a position to satisfy the curiosity
of others. She was scarcely put in that position now.

"They came out in the early days," said Rigden, "both of the colony and
of their own married life. Yet already these were numbered, and I was
born an orphan. But my dear mother lived to make a