Page:Coo-ee - tales of Australian life by Australian ladies.djvu/57

Rh nook, sheltered on three sides by thick scrub that quite shaded us from the sun, while it was open to get the breeze from the river. Don't run away with the idea that a fine stream of water rolled below us. There was none at all visible from this place, only the broad empty bed covered with grass in high thick tufts, with half-dead reeds and clumps of bushes, and any amount of débris, great logs, broken branches, sticks and withered leaves lying piled up in tangled masses and curved ridges, as the last flood had left them. Through this ran a narrow channel, 'promiscuous like,' swerving now to this side, now to the other. It was hard to picture the whole of this wide space filled bank high with a rushing, swirling torrent; but the rubbish lodged among the branches of trees growing in it told a tale.

The Ashwood people came up about the same time as we did, Mrs. Grimes looking wonderfully young (she was well up in the thirties) behind her black lace veil, under which her dark velvety eyes and white teeth flashed most becomingly. Old Grimes was in a suit of nankeen that had been so often washed that its colour was almost gone, while it had so shrunk that his legs and arms appeared to have grown since he began to wear it. The stranger did not take my fancy much; but apparently my sentiments were not shared by Mrs. Grimes, for his attentions—and he was pretty lavish of them—were received graciously enough. Hope went off, and I caught sight of him and Hamley planted behind a fig