Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/16

6 "Forestin," he said, reading the flourishing T as an F. "What language do you imagine that is?"

"It's T, not F," said Harriet.

"Torestin," he said, pronouncing it like Russian. "Must be a native word."

"No," said Harriet. "It means To rest in." She didn't even laugh at him. He became painfully silent.

Harriet didn't mind very much. They had been on the move for four months, and she felt if she could but come to anchor somewhere in a corner of her own, she wouldn't much care where it was, or whether it was called Torestin or Angels Roost or even Très Bon.

It was, thank heaven, quite a clean little bungalow, with just commonplace furniture, nothing very preposterous. Before Harriet had even taken her hat off she removed four pictures from the wall, and the red plush tablecloth from the table. Somers had disconsolately opened the bags, so she fished out an Indian sarong of purplish shot colour, to try how it would look across the table. But the walls were red, of an awful deep bluey red, that looks so fearful with dark-oak fittings and furniture: or dark-stained jarrah, which amounts to the same thing; and Somers snapped, looking at the purple sarong—a lovely thing in itself:

"Not with red walls."

"No, I suppose not," said Harriet, disappointed. "We can easily colour-wash them white—or cream."

"What, start colour-washing walls?"

"It would only take half a day."

"That's what we come to a new land for—to God's Own Country—to start colour-washing walls in a beastly little suburban bungalow? That we've hired for three months and mayn't live in three weeks!"

"Why not? You must have walls."

"I suppose you must," he said, going away to inspect the two little bedrooms, and the kitchen, and the outside. There was a scrap of garden at the back, with a path down the middle, and a fine Australian tree at the end, a tree with pale bark and no leaves, but big tufts of red, spikey flowers. He looked at the flowers in wonder. They were apparently some sort of bean flower, in sharp tufts, like great red spikes of stiff wisteria, curving upwards, not