Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/503

Rh Ten years to a day from the last balance at the old Jewry, Uriah Tattenhall balanced again, and his three thousand pounds were grown to seventy thousand pounds, and were still rolling up and on like a snowball.

There were George and Bob grown into really tall and handsome fellows. George was an able merchant. Bob had got a station out at the Dundenough-hills, and told wonderful stories of riding after kangaroos, and wild bulls, and shooting splendid lyre-birds—all of which came of reading Pringle's Life in South Africa. There were Mary and Lucy, two handsome girls as any in the colony, and wonderfully attractive to a young Benson and a younger Robinson. "'onders were the next year to bring forth and amongst them was to be a grand picnic at Bob's station, Dudenong, in which they were to live out in real tents in the forest, and cook, and bake, and brew, and the ladies were to join in a bull hunt, and shoot with revolvers, and nobody was to be hurt, or thrown, or anything to happen, but all sorts of merriment and wildwood life.

And really my brother's villa on the Yarra River is a very fine place. The house is an Italian villa, built of real stone, ample, with large, airy rooms, a broad veranda, and all in the purest taste. It stands on a high bank above the valley, in which the Yarra winds, taking a sweep there, its course marked by a dense body of acacia trees. In the spring these trees are of resplendent gold, loading the air with their perfume, now they were thick and dark in their foliage, casting their shade on the river deep between its banks. From the house the view presented this deep valley with this curving track of trees, and beyond slopes divided into little farms, with their little homesteads upon them, where Uriah had a number of tenants making their fortunes on some thirty or forty acres each, by hay at forty pounds a ton, and potatoes and onion at one shilling a pound, and all other produce in proportion.

On this side of the river you saw extensive gardens in the hollow, blooming with roses and many tropical flowers, and along the hillsides on other hand vineyards and fruit orchards of the most vigorous vegetation, and loaded with young fruit. The party assembled at my brother Uriah's house on that hospitable Christmas day, descended