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CHAPTER V.
ARCADIA.
O gaily sings the bird! and the wattle-boughs are stirred,
And rustled by the scented breath of spring.
Oh the weary, wistful longing! Oh the faces that are thronging!
Oh the voices that are vaguely whispering. "—A. L. Gordon.
There's a strange something, which without a brain
Fools feel, and which e'en wise men can't explain.
Planted in.man, to bind him to that earth,
In dearest ties, from whence he drew his birth."
Churchill, The Farewell.
"If ever there was an earthly paradise, it is here, my child."
"You're very fond of the place, father," remarked a girl whose sixteen summers had dyed her rounded cheeks olive and red; her large eyes were hazel, hair golden-brown; a picture of beautiful youth she looked, as she sat at the old man's feet plying her needle.
The cottage stood on a slight eminence. Far away to the right stretched a smiling valley, on either side of it sloped pine-dotted hills, with here and there a huge granite boulder indicating rich soil beneath. A sinuous line of wattle, golden with blossom, marked the winding of the creek, seeming to convert the plain into a series of gigantic primrose-beds. Two miles away, the streak of gold lost itself in a sheet of silver and red, as the creek flowed into a lake, some three miles below. The rays of the setting sun were illuminating its glittering surface.
