Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 17, 2025
The Billabong ball was an event for which an invitation was much coveted. Norah kept close to her father's wing, as they entered, shaking hands gravely with the men by the door, and with Mrs. Brown which latter proceeding she privately considered a joke. The boys followed; Jim quiet and pleasant; Wally favouring Murty O'Toole with a solemn wink, and Cecil plainly bored by the little ceremony.
From the garden below came shouts and laughter, as Jim engaged Norah and Wally in a strenuous set on the tennis court. "Absolutely no class limits whatever, and no restrictions why, she kept me waiting for my second cup while she looked after that fat old black in the dirty white turban! As for the boys childish young hoodlums. Well, thank goodness I'm not condemned to Billabong all my days!"
The Billabong maids were no less independent than modern maids generally are, but they had their views about the city gentleman's manner to the daughter of the house. "On'y a bit of a kid himself," Mary had said to Sarah, indignantly, "but any one'd think he owned the earth, an' Miss Norah was a bit of it."
Slabs of ice 3 ft. thick, and weighing tons, had been tented upwards over a circular area with a diameter of about 25 ft., and cracks radiated outwards for more than 20 ft. The quarters in the 'tween decks were completed by the 10th, and the men took possession of the cubicles that had been built. The largest cubicle contained Macklin, McIlroy, Hurley, and Hussey and it was named "The Billabong."
But the four people from Billabong stood silently, glad of each other's nearness, but with no words, and in David Linton's heart and Norah's was a great surge of thankfulness that, out of many perils, they were bringing their boys safely home.
"Might it missus like puppy dog," it said to explain its presence hinting also that the missus might require a little clothes-washing done. Lately, washing-days at the homestead had lost all their vim, for the creek having stopped running, washing had to be conducted in tubs, so as to keep the billabong clear for drinking purposes.
Soon after breakfast-time Happy Dick was across "To see how you've fared," he said, and then, to the diversion of Brown of the Bulls, Cheon and Happy Dick rejoiced together over the brimming water-butts, and mourned because the billabong had not done better, regretting the while that the showers were so "patchy."
"And the bush fires every Sunday morning, and the blacks that rush down what is it? Oh yes, the Block, casting boomerangs about! There is much spare time on a troopship, Mrs. Linton, and all of it was employed by the subalterns in telling us what we might expect!" "I can quite imagine it," Mrs. Geoffrey laughed. "Oh well, Billabong will be a good breaking-in.
It was unfortunate, from the point of view of Bob's instruction, that the frantic zeal of Murty and the men to have everything in order for "the Boss" had left no yard of the Billabong boundary unvisited not a month before.
He bent to kiss her. "You don't know what a comfort your sleep has been to me, my girlie," he said. "Good-night!" It was the third day of the struggle with death over the Hermit's unconscious body, and again twilight was falling upon Billabong. The house was hushed and silent. No footfall was allowed to sound where the echo might penetrate to the sick-room. Near its precincts Mrs.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking