road passed within two hundred
yards, neither we nor our horses could be seen by the travellers thereon.
I lay on the soft moss and leaves and drank deeply of the beauties of
nature. The soft rush of the river, the scent of the shrubs, the golden
sunset, occasionally the musical clatter of hoofs on the road, the gentle
noises of the fishers fishing, the plop, plop of a platypus disporting
itself mid stream, came to me as sweetest elixir in my ideal,
dream-of-a-poet nook among the pink-based, grey-topped, moss-carpeted
rocks.

I was a creature of joy in those days. Life is made up of little things.
It was a small thing to have a little pocket-money to spend on anything
that took my fancy--a very small thing, and yet how much pleasure it gave
me. Though eating is not one of the great aims of my life, yet it was
nice to have enough of any delicacy one fancied. Not that we ever went
hungry at home, but when one has nothing to cat in the hot weather but
bread and beef it gives them tendency to dream of fruit and cool
dainties. When one thinks of the countless army of one's fellows who are
daily selling their very souls for the barest necessaries of life, I
suppose we--irresponsible beings--should be thankful to God for allowing
us, by scratching and scraping all our lives, to keep a crust in our
mouth and a rag on our back. I am not thankful, I have been guilty of
what Pat would term a "digresshion"--I started about going for the mail
at Dogtrap. Harold Beecham never once missed taking me home on Thursdays,
even when his shearing was in full swing and he must have been very busy.
He never once uttered a word of love to me--not so much as one of the
soft nothings in which young people of opposite sexes often deal without
any particular significance. Whether he went to all the bother and waste
of time accruing from escorting me home out of gentlemanliness alone, was
a mystery to me. I desired to find out, and resolved to drive instead of
ride to Dogtrap one day to see what he would say.

Grannie assented to the project. Of course I could drive for once if I
didn't feel able to ride, but the horses had been spelling for a long
time and were very frisky. I must take Frank with me or I might get my
neck broken.

I flatly opposed the idea of Frank Hawden going with me. He would make a
mull of the whole thing. It was no use arguing with grannie and
impressing upon her the fact that I was not the least nervous concerning
the hor