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Updated: May 4, 2025
"Going to run away becauses mother is always scolding you?" "No, you little silly! I'm going up to Caddagat to live with grannie." "Always?" "Yes." "Really?" "Yes." "Honour bright?" "Yes; really and truly and honour bright." "Won't you ever come back again?" "I don't know about never coming back again; but I'm going up for always, as far as a person can lay out ahead of her. Do you care?"
Joe Archer was appointed to take us home on the morrow. When our host was seeing us off still with his eye covered he took opportunity of whispering to me his intention of coming to Caddagat on the following Sunday. Early in the afternoon of that day I took a book, and, going down the road some distance, climbed up a broad-branched willow-tree to wait for him.
He spoke as though well educated, and a gentleman as drovers often are. Why, then, was he on the road? I put him down as a scapegrace, for he had all the winning pleasant manner of a ne'er-do-well. At noon a nice, blazing, dusty noon we halted within a mile of Caddagat for lunch. I could have easily ridden home for mine, but preferred to have it with the drovers for fun.
It was sundown when I got in sight of Caddagat. Knowing the men would not be home for some time, I rode across the paddock to yard the cows. I drove them home and penned the calves, unsaddled my horse and returned him to the orchard, then stood upon the hillside and enjoyed the scene.
Twelve years before I went to Caddagat, when Helen Bossier had been eighteen and one of the most beautiful and lovable girls in Australia, there had come to Caddagat on a visit a dashing colonel of the name of Bell, in the enjoyment of a most extended furlough for the benefit of his health. He married aunt Helen and took her to some part of America where his regiment was stationed.
As the days till my departure melted away, how I wished that it were possible to set one's weight against the grim wheel of time and turn it back! Nights I did not sleep, but drenched my pillow with tears. Ah, it was hard to leave grannie and aunt Helen, whom I worshipped, and turn my back on Caddagat!
Oh, were I seated high as my ambition, I'd place this loot on naked necks of monarchs! At the time of my departure for Caddagat my father had been negotiating with beer regarding the sale of his manhood; on returning I found that he had completed the bargain, and held a stamped receipt in his miserable appearance and demeanour.
Gertie left us in October 1897, and it was somewhere about January 1898 that all the letters from Caddagat were full to overflowing with the wonderful news of Harold Beecham's reinstatement at Five-Bob Downs, under the same conditions as he had held sway there in my day.
"Couldn't some means of employing them be arrived at?" "Work!" he ejaculated. "That's the very thing the crawling divils are terrified they might get." "Yes; but couldn't some law be made to help them?" "A law to make me cut up Caddagat and give ten of 'em each a piece, and go on the wallaby myself, I suppose?"
Mr Goodchum told us it was his first experience of the country, and therefore he was enjoying himself immensely. He also mentioned that he was anxious to see some of the gullies around Caddagat, which, he had heard, were renowned for the beauty of their ferns. Aunt Helen, accordingly, proposed a walk in the direction of one of them, and hurried off to attend to a little matter before starting.
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