us with great pride that this church is the oldest stone building in New Zealand, and has seen its Jubilee. Outside in the churchyard there is a handsome monument to the Taranaki men who fell in the South African war.
As we were so near the famous recreation grounds we went on to see them before luncheon. But once there we forgot all about the time, and forgot, too, that the mid-day meal on Sundays is dinner and not luncheon in New Zealand hotels, so beautiful were the ferns and mosses, the native woods, the little creeks full of fish, and the ponds with swans, black as well as white, sailing on them. When at last the inward monitor proclaimed the hour it was too late to hope for hospitality at the hotel, so Colonel Deane and Captain Greendays went off in search of a Chinaman’s fruit shop, and we lunched frugally and ideally in a natural arbour of “kowhai’s flowering yellow gold.” Then the townspeople began to invade our Paradise, so we surrendered it and returned to town for a carriage to drive a few miles out and see some of the old forts.
An hour or so later we had pulled up close to a rustic bridge that I wanted to include in a photograph of Mount Egmont when a motor car went buzzing by, to stop suddenly in the middle of the bridge a moment after it had passed our carriage. And a voice called out,
“Hullo! old chap! When did you get back?”
It was the driver of the car addressing Colonel Deane, and then two very pretty girls sprang out of the car as Colonel Deane turned, and seized his hands as if they were immensely delighted at his unexpected appearance. Then introductions took place, and Colonel Deane’s old friends insisted on his new ones and he going in a body to their home.
It was not very far from where we were, and looked as if it stood at the very base of the mountain. It was a charming old place that they had tried to make as English as possible in memory of the home the parents of the two girls had left behind in Devonshire thirty years ago. In front of the verandahed wooden house embowered in climbing roses were lawns bounded by a winding willow-bordered stream; at the back, orchards, where pears, plums, apples, cherries, oranges, and tangerines flourished in surprising harmony. The place was nearly surrounded with beautiful native bush, with tree-fern and cabbage-palms; flax and toi-grass grew in the creek; the turquoise sea rippled and sparkled in front, and the great white cone of the mountain towered above the undulating pasture-lands and forest stretching away behind.
We could not have contrived a happier accident than this meeting. They were ideal English colonists, refined yet practical, accomplished as well as domesticated, not vulgarly rich but comfortably prosperous, and as hospitable as the Irish.
The two girls and I were speedily very great friends, and after tea we left Captain and Mrs Greendays chatting on the lawn with the old people while we strolled about the place with their brothers and Colonel Deane. They wanted me to stay, or at least to promise a visit later on. Of course I could not, as our
