The Happy Adventurers, Lydia Miller Middleton [mini ebook reader txt] 📗

which wouldn’t be a bad name for a book if you wanted to write one.”

“Jolly good name for a pub, if you wanted to keep one,” Jerry remarked. “I shouldn’t wonder if he got it from some old coaching inn of the olden times—though, of course, we are in the olden times already, if it comes to that—fairly old, at any rate.”

“No, he got it from a place at home where Prince Charlie once had a drink. When the girls are here he gets in a couple of women to look after them. Other times he only has his heathen Chinee lot, and jolly good they are! That is, of course, if you like stewed puppy and bird’s nest,” Hugh added solemnly; “I love ‘em myself.”

“Adore ‘em,” Jerry said, smacking his lips. “Never lose a chance of having puppy-tail hash when we can get it, do we, old son?”

“Rather not,” Dick replied. “Remember those bird’s-nest tarts our old woman at the tuck-shop used to make before butter got so scarce? Scrumptious!”

The appearance of the girls interrupted these flights of masculine fancy. Grizzel still looked subdued, but the tears were dried, and she was listening politely to Mollie’s tuneful advice to “Pack your troubles in your own kit-bag, and smile, smile, smile”. Hugh shouted to them to hurry up or they would be late for tea, and soon the little party was under way again, as cheerful as if diamonds had never been heard of. They were now in sight of Drink Between; a square, solidly built house, with a wide veranda and balcony on three sides of it, completely hidden at present under a pale-purple drapery of wistaria.

“It looks like an amethyst,” Mollie said admiringly, as they drew near. “I never saw such a purple house as that before.”

The inside of Drink Between was entirely different from any of the other Australian houses which Mollie had been in. They entered by a side door which opened straight on to a narrow stairway. The girls climbed up to their bedroom, a large airy apartment opening on to the balcony.

“Where are your father and mother and Baby?” Mollie asked, as they washed away the remains of oranges and gold-digging.

“Papa and Mamma have to go and meet an immigrant ship tomorrow, so they aren’t coming up till afterwards. And Baby and Bridget are with them.”

“What’s an immigrant ship?” asked Mollie.

“A ship full of immigrants,” Prudence replied, brushing out her curls with conscientious care. “Immigrants are people who get their passage out for nothing, or for very little, and then they go to work here. Mamma is getting a new cook because ours is going to be married. And Papa likes to meet the Scotch immigrants and say welcome to Australia to them. Bridget was an immigrant, but she says she will soon be Australian.”

“I see,” said Mollie thoughtfully. “Are they ever married? I mean— do children come with their parents?”

“Yes, lots of them. Are you ready, Mollie? The boys are getting impatient. I can hear them growling.”

Feeling very fresh and clean in white muslin frocks with pale-blue sashes, the girls descended by a different and much wider staircase than the one they had gone up by. They stepped off the stairs straight into a large hall, or living-room, which apparently occupied half the floor of the house, for on two sides it opened on to the veranda, and on the third side into a large bamboo house; the fourth wall was unbroken but for one door. The room was painted white, and the floor covered with fine white Chinese matting, over which lay a few Eastern rugs, their once rich and glowing colours now dimmed by time and the tread of generations of feet. Through the wide-open French windows could be seen the long, graceful streamers of wistaria, hanging from the arched boughs round the veranda like a lace veil. Against this background grew masses of pale-pink and blue hydrangeas, with their flat fragile flowers and broad leaves. The bamboo house was given wholly to ferns, over which a fountain was playing, and under the fine spray the green fronds glistened as freshly as though they grew in the heart of an English wood.

The sun was now setting, and its crimson glow shone through the mauve wistaria, filling the room with an opal-coloured light which made Mollie think of fairyland. It fell with a peculiarly pleasant effect upon a round tea-table spread for tea. She had never seen such fine and snowy damask, such shining silver, or such delicately transparent china cups and saucers. Even Grannie’s well-kept table paled before the exquisite freshness of this one. As for the food part—there was a crystal bowl of yellow clotted cream, a plate of gossamer balls which were probably intended to pass for scones, a twist of gold which was most likely meant for bread, and dishes of preserves unknown to the English children—tiny green oranges in syrup, scarlet rose-berries, and jellies like amber and topaz, looking as though some of Hugh’s precious stones had been cooked for his tea.

They were about halfway through this beautiful meal when there was a sound of footsteps on the matting, and a Chinese servant appeared, bearing a large iced birthday cake set on a silver tray.

“Hullo, Ah Kew! What you gottee there?” called Hugh, under the impression that he was speaking pidgin-English to perfection.

“Master talkee to-day b’long he burfday,” Ah Kew replied. “He talkee my, wanchee cook makee one piecee burfday-cake.” He set the cake down in front of Prudence as he spoke.

“Welly good, Ah Kew, Master b’long quitey righty,” said Hugh approvingly. “Cook makee jolly-good cakee, me eat jolly-good cakee. Cook pleased, me pleased, cakee pleased, all jolly-welly pleased.”

Ah Kew smiled a slow and mysterious smile, his black eyes closing up under his slanting eyebrows, and his blue-capped head nodding. He glanced over the tea-table.

“Tea b’long all plopper?” he asked anxiously. “S’pose you wanchee more can have plenty more.”

“No, thank you, Ah Kew, me eatee more me bustee,” Hugh replied politely. Ah Kew nodded his head again and departed, his pigtail flapping against the long skirts of his blue cotton coat.

Prudence cut the beautiful cake and distributed large slices all round. No grown-up person was present to make sensible remarks about not eating too much, which was a good or a bad thing “according to circs” as Jerry would say.

The children were all tired after their hard work and excitement; Mr. Fraser was not coming home till late, and had left a message to say that he expected to find everyone fast asleep in bed when he got back; so, after a tour of exploration round the house and its immediate neighbourhood, they went off to their rooms, and soon most of them were asleep.

Not all of them, however. Whether it was the cake, or the change of air, or the strange bed, or still stranger circumstances, or all combined, it would be hard to say, but it seemed to Dick that the longer he lay in bed the more wakeful he became. The thought of the diamond began to worry him, and soon assumed gigantic proportions in his mind. Suppose it got lost. Perhaps it was worth a hundred pounds, as Jerry had suggested. Suppose a magpie flew off with it. It might be worth more than a hundred; perhaps two hundred pounds. What if a blackfellow stole it, or the tree fell down in the night, or got burnt up. It is true that none of these things had happened during the months in which it had lain there before, but then no one had known that it was valuable. It would be just like luck, or rather unluck, if something happened this particular night. Dick’s knowledge of diamonds was so small that it could be hardly said to exist, and he now began to have nightmarish visions of huge sums of money—thousands of pounds perhaps, lost through his folly. To be sure, no one knew that he had put the diamond back in the tree. But he knew himself, which was the main thing. He tossed from side to side restlessly. A new thought perplexed him. How could anything he did or left undone matter now, seeing that he wasn’t going to be born for another thirty years? He belonged to the future, and the future could not influence the present—at least, he supposed not, but funny things did happen. Anyhow, this was his present for the moment, and he had his usual irritating conscience.

He got out of bed at last and went to the window. There was such a flood of moonlight that out-of-doors was almost as light as day. Why not slip into his clothes and scoot down to the bottom of the scrub-land, and collect that diamond? It would be better than tossing about in bed, and afterwards he would go calmly to sleep. The difficulty would be to get out of the house. Probably Ah Kew was on the watch for his master, and, if he saw Dick, would remark “no can do”, or words to that effect.

Dick went to the edge of the balcony and looked over; it was not very far from the ground, but it was too far to jump. How about the wistaria boughs? They looked pretty tough—he decided to try, and if he fell—well, he had smashed himself up before this more than once, and no doubt would do so again. A few tumbles more or less wouldn’t make much difference to him, especially, he reflected, as he was bound to get back to 1920 somehow or other. He could hardly kill himself now if he tried.

He reached the ground with nothing worse than a few scratches to his credit, and set off along the path by which they had come in the afternoon, keeping well in the shadow of the hedge in case Ah Kew’s beady eyes should be on the outlook. So long as he was within the grounds of the house he felt confident and cheerful, but when he reached the slip-rail and looked over into the land beyond he felt some of his courage oozing away.

It looked eerie, that strange, unfamiliar country, in this white light. There were dead trees standing here and there, and their pale trunks took unpleasant shapes—they might conceivably be something else than trees—not ghosts, of course; there were no such things as ghosts. All the tales he had ever read about Australia suddenly started up in his mind—tales of deadly snakes, of bushrangers, of blackfellows, who had methods of their own of doing you in. One might go through a good deal without being actually killed. Now that he came to think of it, Australia in the ‘seventies was a wildish sort of place—in some parts at any rate. He wished that he was surer where he was—how far away from civilization. He supposed that Ned Kelly and his gang were still at large.

But, of course, he could not go back. He stepped cautiously from tree to tree, keeping to the black shadows as much as possible. He could hear the sound of that little waterfall quite distinctly, and see the moonlight on the rippling shallows of the creek—now he could see the gum tree he was making for—he had taken particular notice of a crooked bough—what on earth was that?

A wild piercing shriek from somewhere beyond the creek brought him suddenly to a standstill, his heart in his mouth. Undoubtedly a woman was being murdered or tortured. Blackfellows, probably, as Ned Kelly made a point of not hurting women—at least so it said in Robbery Under Arms. Dick wondered what exactly the blackfellows had done to the woman—and there was the blood-curdling shriek again!

He stood still. After all, why