Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/38

28 earliest days. Their patrimony they invested in frame-houses, outfit of an elaborate nature, land and stock purchased in the colony. Dowling was a lawyer; his wife was connected with some of the best county families. Their eldest daughter, the belle of Fenshire, was delicate as she was beautiful. The move broke Grace Dowling's heart. She pined for the conditions and companionship of earlier days, and could see no beauties in eucalyptus and mimosa.

A tree beside the first homestead marks the spot where Grace was laid to rest at last. The grief-stricken parents with their remaining daughter moved on, with sadly shrunken means, to the neighbouring colony.

Dowling arrived in Melbourne just in time to purchase the reserve, to which a friend at the club had directed his attention. The frame-house was again set up, the hundred and twenty acres fenced, some stock procured; then the unfortunate lawyer's last penny was expended. None knew how the trio existed.

Did he never regret relinquishing the little country practice, as he ploughed his own lands, laid out his garden, killed his sheep, took his produce in the spring-cart to Gumford railway-station? Did he not repent his folly, as his daughter swept the dust from ornaments and furniture that had known better days, from portraits of ancestors who seemed to be ever wondering how they came amongst their present surroundings, from the old clock that had stood centuries "on the stairs" at home and seemed never quite reconciled to the house that was all ground-floor?

As the old man saw his daughter milking, even driving the reaping-machine, while he sat and rattled his bones over the clods; as he saw his beautiful old wife making up the butter with her snowy, tapering fingers, trimming