Chapter VI
“You see, I’m only a station-hand, Effie.”
“Well, that’s all you were when I first loved you, silly boy.”
“It didn’t matter then. Nothing mattered. Now—it matters more than all the world besides.”
“It doesn’t! How can it? I like things to be just the same. The sunshine, and all the slope of yellow down to the creek, and you sitting up here just with me alone. I am I, and you are you; and we’ve got all the sum and the breezes to ourselves. And that is enough.”
“Is it? My little Effie—you don’t know———”
“Oh, look! There’s a butterfly! The first one of spring! Ah!”
Randal came to his feet as she sprang past him with the gladness of a child in her limbs and in her face. The spring air was blowing warm across the hill-top and the veined slopes to the westing, and the smell of young grass and brown earth came up from the paddock-flat where Moody and Lou were ploughing. The hog-backed range to the rightward was
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