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72 a hundred objects of. interest. Her father and Travers had few spare moments.

Every Saturday a score or two of the families were invited to tea. Later the girls sang to them in the drawing-room, round games were indulged in, and finally a few dances.

In the course of the clear frosty nights the doctor would interest the men with the microscope in his study, or the telescope on the verandah. No talk of 'shop" was permitted—that was reserved for meetings when papers were read and discussed in the wool-shed, improvised for the present into a hall.

"We have something other to do," the doctor would say, "than to make money. The bane of Englishmen has been that they are engrossed in business. We must have play of fancy here, contact of mind with mind, heart with heart, and soul with its Maker, if we are not to become more mechanical than the slaves of the city. 'Work while you work,' and then, betimes, talk, converse like rational men, or sport for a while as children."

Every alternate evening the band played on the village green, while children and their elders enjoyed "rounders" close by; great babies of men playing "hide and seek" with the little ones about the tents, as for an hour jollity prevailed.

"Ours is an Italian climate," the doctor remarked sometimes; "while we cling to our sturdy English sense of decency and duty, let us sun ourselves betimes, and acquire some of the tastes and graces of a southern life."

Among the neighbouring squatter folk who took more or less interest in the presence and projects of the Courtenays was one Larry O'Lochlan, a red-haired, good-