"What do you want me to do now?" Our good humoured and stalwart cadet
Mr. U----, walked backwards, holding out a carrot and calling Jack to
come and eat it.

In this extraordinary fashion we proceeded down the flat for two or
three hundred yards, one carrot succeeding the other in Jack's jaws
rapidly. Mr. U---- was just beginning to say "Look here: don't you think
we ought to take turns at this?" when Jack caught sight of a creek right
before him. He only knew of one way of crossing such obstacles, and that
was to jump them. No one calculated on the sudden rush and high bound
into the air with which he triumphantly cleared the water; knocking Mr.
U---- over, and scattering his three drivers like summer leaves on
the track. As for Alice and me, the inside passengers, we found the
sensation of jumping a creek in a dray most unpleasant. All the croquet
balls leapt wildly up into the air to fall like a wooden hailstorm
around us. The mallets and hoops bruised us from our head to our feet;
and the contents of my basket were utterly ruined. Not only had my
tea-cups and saucers come together in one grand smash, but the kettle
broke the bottle of cream, which in its turn absorbed all the sugar.
Jack looked coolly round at us with an air of mild satisfaction, as if
he thought he had done something very clever, whilst our shrieks were
rending the air.

What a merry, light-hearted time of one's life was that! We all had to
work hard, and our amusements were so simple and Arcadian that I often
wonder if they really did amuse us so much as we thought they did at the
moment. Let all New Zealanders who doubt this, look into those perhaps
closed chapters of their lives, and as memory turns over the leaves one
by one, and pictures like the sketches I try to reproduce in pen
and ink, grow into distinctness out of the dim past, it will indeed
"surprise me very much," if they do not say, as I do,--my pleasant task
ended,--"Ah, those were happy days indeed!"

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