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'I suspect that in the earlier stages of bush-life there are no holidays, replied Robert: 'if you just reflect that everything in the way of civilisation has to be done afresh from the beginning pretty much like living on a desert island. Now I've got a house to build by summer time, and here are all the preparations towards it as yet; and he pointed to the shingles.
I have often fancied that there must be something monotonous and depressing in Australian bush-life; the very uniformity of the seasons and of the face of the country must produce this effect. However, old fellow, here we are: and whether the land be a good, bad, or indifferent land compared with others, you and I have made up our minds to make the best of it.
Wynn could put upon Zack's astounding proposition. His dignity was cruelly outraged. 'Baiting the trap with his hateful knavish gains! cried Linda's father. 'This is the result of the democracy of bush-life; the indiscriminate association with all classes of people that's forced on one. Any low fellow that pleases may ask your daughter in marriage!
Alluding to Ferguson as one type of his country, she observes that, 'underlying the rough-and-ready manners and the prosaic routine of bush-life, there is an old-world chivalry, a reverence for women, a purity of thought, a delicacy of sentiment.... This is partly due to the breezy moral atmosphere, and partly to the influence of books, which become living realities in the solitude and monotony of existence among the gum-trees.
Any one accustomed to smooth enclosed countries, with regular roads and houses at short distances, would indeed find the backwoods 'awfully wild. And that most gentle mother, how would she bear the transplanting? 'I had a very misty idea of what bush-life was, I own, till I found myself in it, quoth Robert, after a long silence, broken only by the ring of the axes.
But when completed, and the goods and chattels moved in, quite a proud sense of proprietorship stole into the owner's heart. As yet, this arduous bush-life had not ceased to be as it were a play: Sam Holt's cheery companionship took the edge off every hardship; and their youthful health and strength nourished under toil.
Poor Dick had started life with a religious reverence for woman; had carried out his brittle possession to bush-life in Australia, from thence through two A.D.C.-ships, and, after many vicissitudes, had brought it safely back with a large consignment of his own Burgundy to his native land. It was still sufficiently intact save for a chip or two to make a pretty wedding-present to his future wife.
Those ultra-conservatives among our number, those rigid adherents to the most primitive bush-life, of course despise all the refinements of the table. Plates, forks, and spoons are to them degeneracies, things that no noble bushman needs or requires. They scorn any leanings towards luxury and ease.
Naturally, his brother would have taken one, and he the other; but Mr Berrington was so little accustomed to bush-life, that the captain persuaded him to remain at home, and to let Mr Hayward lead the other party. Hector, who had no great liking for Mr Hayward, begged that he might accompany his uncle. Sandy would have liked to follow his master, but his duties kept him at home.
'Do you mean to say the trees stood as thick here as they do there? If so, you have done wonders already, said his father. 'My poor boys, it was killing work. 'Not at all, sir, contradicted Robert right cheerily; 'I enjoyed it after the first few weeks, as soon as I began to see my way. We've been quite happy this winter in the woods, though bush-life was so new and strange.
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