Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/99

Rh for the crops to ripen, a cloud of cockatoos were shrieking—now sweeping in a white mass upon the plain, now swarming again about another clump of trees, like flakes of snow on a mountain fir. In the pauses between the shrieks and chatter of the feathery tribe, sounds of children's laughter, the lowing of cattle, shouts of animated groups watching the football contest on the village green far below, arose, as if a few hundred yards away, on the clear air softened and sweet as from another world. Wreaths of smoke ascended lazily from three hundred scattered cottages, the perfume of flowers from a hundred gardens mingled with the stronger odours of eucalypts on the hill-side.

"Better than the crowded slums and dreary artisans' quarters of most of our cities," Travers suggested.

His companion was too moved to reply at once. Feelings of gratitude and joy were filling her breast, in which the light of a new-born love was kindling.

"I should like to live here," she said at length as if to herself, "and look always on that scene, watch the trees we have planted grow, see the first-fruits of our labours bearing down the boughs, and all the promise of the land unfolding and fulfilled."

"So you shall," her companion had almost replied; checking himself he remarked—"

"Strange to say, I have selected this very site for myself. Already I have a lodge erected beyond those trees. Some day, when our ships literally come home, and lie, not two or three, in that broad lake, I shall build a bungalow palace on this hill-side and watch the development of our village of the vale."

"Do you remember," suddenly asked the maiden, seeking to change the conversation, "Carlyle's 'Everlasting Yea,' in his Sartor Resartus?"