'they're coming home, Miss Browne!'

It was Miss Browne's turn to look anguished. She rose up and moved uncertainly about the room, she began to tidy the music in feverish haste, she dusted the piano yet again.

Then she turned to Mr. Cameron with one hand fluttering out.

'I—I—must ask you to let me have a s—shilling,' she quavered; 'the—the boys really must have their hair cut before she sees them.'

CHAPTER II

The Wonder-Child

'Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved! God's child with His dew

On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still living and blue,

Just broken to twine round thy harp-strings.'

Up to the last eight years Mr. Cameron's friends and relatives had always had their hands full with finding positions for him that would enable him to support his wife and family.

Once or twice he was in receipt of five hundred a year, but much more frequently he would be in a bank or an insurance company, starting with a modest salary of a hundred and twenty.

Every one liked him cordially—they could not help it. But every one was unfeignedly glad when one of the relatives made a great effort, and, by dint of interviewing Members of Parliament and getting a little influence to bear here and a little there, worked him into the Civil Service, the appointment being that of Crown Land Agent at Wilgandra, the salary two hundred and forty pounds, less ten pounds for the Superannuation Fund.

Wilgandra was so far away—three hundred and seventy-three miles back, back, away in the heart of the country—the very farthest town to which the Government sent its Land Agents. Surely the bad penny could never turn up again to vex their peace!

Even Mrs. Cameron's anxious soul was set at rest.

The climate was intolerable in the summer, there was little or no society, the only house they could have was not over comfortable. But the work seemed smooth and easy, and after so many ups and downs the quiet security of the small hot township seemed delicious to her.

It was not that Mr. Cameron drank or gambled, or possessed indeed any highly coloured sin. He was simply one of the impracticables, the dreamers, that the century has no room for.

He had written verses that the weekly papers had accepted; indeed, a few daintily delicate things had found their way into the best English magazines.

He had painted pictures—a score of them, perhaps; the art societies had accepted three of them, refused nine, and never been even offered the remainder; no one had ever bought one of them.

He had composed some melodies that a musical light passing through Sydney professed to be captivated with, had promised to have published in London, and had forgotten entirely.

When they were unpacking their much-ravelled chattels the first night in Wilgandra, James Cameron came to his great paint-box that the late family vicissitudes had prevented him touching for so long.

'Ah,' he said, and a light of great pleasure came into his grey eyes as he lifted it from the packing-case and rubbed the dust off it with his good cuff—'mine old familiar friend. Why, Molly darling, I shan't know myself with a brush in my hand again. With all the spare time there will be here, I ought to do some good work at last.'

Then his wife laid down the stack of little torn pinafores and patched jackets and frocks she was lifting from another box, and crossed the room and knelt down by her husband's side, just where he was kneeling beside the rough packing-case that had held his treasure.

'Dear one,' she said, 'dear one, Jim, Jim,'—one hand went round his neck, her head, with its warm brown hair that the grey was threading years too soon, pressed against his shoulder, her face, old, young, sad, smiling, looked into his, her brave brown eyes held tears.

'Why, little woman,' he said, 'what is it—what is troubling you? Smiling time has come again, Molly, the worries are all left behind with Sydney.'

'Jim,' she said, and her hand tightened on the paint-box he held, 'Jim, do you know we have five children, five of them, five?'

'Well, girlie,' he said, and got up and sat down on the edge of the box and drew her beside him, 'haven't we an income of two hundred and thirty pounds for them, a princely sum, when we are in a place where there is nothing to tempt us to buy? And we hardly left any debts behind us this time.'

'But, dearest, dearest,' she urged, 'if you get hold of this, we shall not have it a year; you will get up in cloudland and forget to furnish your returns or some such thing, and then you will be dismissed again.'

'Ah, Molly,' he said, his face falling, 'always the gloomy side. Couldn't you have given me a night of happiness?'

A stinging tear fell from the woman's eyes.

'I couldn't, I couldn't,' she said; 'the danger made my heart grow sick again. See, for I must be brutal, the time has come for it. I love your ways, your dreams; no canvas you have touched, no song, no verses but I have loved. But what have they done for us, what have they done?'

The man's eyes, startled, followed her tragic finger that swept a circle. Outside he saw the sun-baked, weary little town that must see their days and years, inside the cramped room full of boxes that were disgorging a pitiful array of shabby clothes and broken furniture; just at hand his wife, the woman he had taken to him, fresh and beautiful, to crown his tenderest dream and turned into this thin, careworn, anxious-eyed creature.

His face whitened. 'It is worse than drink!' he said.

She acquiesced sadly.

'Nothing else would make me take it from you,' she said, her wet eyes falling again to the paint-box; 'and if it were you and I only against the world, you should have it all your days. But five children to get ready for the world! Jim, my heart fails me!'

He was trembling too. It was the first time he had felt a sense of genuine responsibility for his tribe since the time Hermie was put into his arms, a babe three hours old. Then he had rushed away to insure his life for five hundred pounds. He forgot, of course, to keep up the policy after the second month. Now his heart felt the weight of the whole five, Hermie, Bartie and Challis, Roly and little Floss.

He gave his wife a passionate kiss.

'You are right,' he said, 'take it; I give it all up for ever, and begin from now to be a man.'

Time went past, and the criss-cross lines on the mother's brow were fading, and the anxious outlook of the eyes seemed gone. She called up a home around her where before had only been a house; the children were taught; she even, by dint of hard