received their weekly provisions. The product of farmyard and field was disposed of in connection with agencies already in existence at Mimosa Vale.
Millie's pictures, painted under brighter auspices, fetched double the price she used to command. Pennie's paper had to exist without her, while she gave herself in spare hours to completing the volume that ere long, with others, brought her fame and fortune.
None but those who know from experience, could conjecture the reason why a freshness and pungency, lacking in earlier efforts, pervaded her subsequent works. Many of Millie's students followed her. Once a month Gussey Gore dispatched to the Work Association a small parcel that now readily commanded purchasers. One or two hours' work with her needle per day sufficed to keep her in credit on the books. As time wore on it was discovered that the cows and the poultry of each fair settler yielded them return at the rate of fifty pounds a year. The garden of cut-flowers for the market, the perfume-farm and apiary, silk- worm grove later, with a dozen other natural industries for which feminine hands were adapted, yielded profits that brought wealth to the promoters, and prompted daily applications for admission to the ever-extending garden-community of Amazona.
On the lake, after work on the soil, the maidens developed their muscles and cleared their brains after study or sedentary occupation. At the annual regatta their yacht distanced all male-manned competitors! A score strong, the Amazons would ride forth, after cows had been milked, and gardens cared for, to hunt the kangaroo in outlying portions of the station. The maidens became sure of eye, as fleet of foot, and came to handle rifle and revolver with a readiness calculated to deter any—had there been such—who would invade their retreat.
