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CHAPTER XI.
TRANSFORMATION SCENE.
"Seek to delight that they may mend mankind,
And while they captivate, inform the mind."—Cowper
"So flows beneath our good and ill
A viewless stream of common will,
A gathering force, a present might.
That from its silent depths of gloom
At Wisdom's voice shall leap to light,
And tide our barren fields in bloom.
Till, all our sundering lines of love o'ergrown.
Our bounds shall be the girdling seas alone."
Australian Poets, J. Bruntun Stephens.
Could the walls of the homestead at Mimosa Vale have spoken, striking contrasts might they have described between the selfish life they had witnessed of old, and the generous one they looked down upon to-day. The costly furniture of the late squatter was the skeleton about which a hundred nameless nicknacks and niceties of refined female taste were disposed. The great halls were real "living-rooms" now, suggestive of culture, comfort, and use. The wide verandah that surrounded the building presented at every turn vistas of ferny bowers. The avenue was well kept, the plantation and orangery clipped and cleaned.
With a pony carriage, tandem-team, and riding-horses at their disposal, Hilda and her mother found to their surprise the country life not intolerable, while Maud dis-
