Page:Emeraldhoursinne00lowtiala.djvu/161

Rh surveyors and navvies working on the extension of the line. Just before we crossed the Waimakariri we passed one of these little camps and the whole community came out to receive the bread and meat we had brought for them from Kumara and exchange news with the driver. One old fellow, an Irishman with a delicious brogue, handed up a scrap of paper to our driver,—a list of groceries which ran thus:


 * lbs.
 * 1 tea.
 * 3 sugar.
 * 6 flower.
 * 3 milk.   T.M.”

“Hullo!” said the driver, when he had read it. “What are you going to do with flowers, Tom? Found a lady-love?”

“Flowers?” repeated Tim in a puzzled tone.

“Yes,—you’ve got six pounds of flowers written here!”

“Why,—flour, for bread, you know!” explained Tim, innocently.

“Oh, flour!” repeated the driver, a man about thirty years of age. “If it’s that you want it was always spelled F L O U R when I was at school!”

Tim looked up, his blue eyes full of fun, and said gravely,

“Is that so? Ah, well, I’m thinkin’ it’s a great while since you were at school!”

On the opposite side of the river is the “Bealey,”—a few cottages, a school, and “The Glacier Hotel.” Two down coaches from Springfield had arrived, and with our two and the buggy landed about seventy people at the hotel, which contains, with an annex, some twenty to thirty bedrooms. I don’t know how they managed to stow everybody away,—the sitting-room was turned into a sort of dormitory for men, who slept on chairs and tables, and even on the floor,—but we, who were luckier than most of our fellow-passengers, had very poky and comfortless rooms.

The hostess was at the door when we arrived, a big Amazonian woman, and as her guests came up the steps she pointed imperiously down the passage and said haughtily,

“Miss Blank will be there to show you your rooms directly.”

We were watching this performance with no little amusement from the coach, having, as usual, waited until everybody else had alighted.

Who is that woman?” asked Mrs Greendays of her husband. “Surely she is not the landlady!”

The driver turned round, pausing in his occupation of unfastening the cords that bound the baggage on to the roof. “That’s just what she is milady!” he announced. “The arrogance of the woman beats anything ever I see, and her husband was nothing but a policeman for all they’ve made their fortunes now out of the very people she treats like the dirt she is herself! They think they can do what they like because it’s the only hotel there is this side of Springfield, and it’s bad luck indeed for the travelling public that they’ve got the place at