" He commenced to unroll it--it was a big blanket--and when
he got to the end there were his own trousers--the lost ones, nothing
more. Dad's eyes met Mother's; Dave's met Sal's; none of them spoke. But
the clergyman drew his own conclusions; and on the following Sunday, at
Nobby-Nobby, he preached a stirring sermon on that touching bequest of the
man with the bear-skin cap.
CHAPTER XXVI.
One Christmas.
Three days to Christmas; and how pleased we were! For months we had
looked forward to it. Kate and Sandy, whom we had only seen once since
they went on their selection, were to be home. Dave, who was away
shearing for the first time, was coming home too. Norah, who had been
away for a year teaching school, was home already. Mother said she looked
quite the lady, and Sal envied the fashionable cut of her dresses.
Things were in a fair way at Shingle Hut; rain had fallen and everything
looked its best. The grass along the headlands was almost as tall as the
corn; the Bathurst-burr, the Scotch-thistles, and the "stinking Roger"
were taller. Grow! Dad never saw the like. Why, the cultivation was n't
large enough to hold the melon and pumpkin vines--they travelled into the
horse-paddock and climbed up trees and over logs and stumps, and they
would have fastened on the horses only the horses were fat and fresh and
often galloped about.
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