Page:Through South Westland.djvu/172

96 Everything was orderly. Cows milked, pigs and calves and chickens fed; the children attended to and taught, and brought up to take care of each other and themselves. Even the baby of two years old sat up at table and fed itself solemnly. Busy from morning till night, yet never hurried; and her low rippling laugh broke out unexpectedly over the least thing. Her big husband could scarcely bear her out of his sight, and appealed to her over everything. All her life she had lived far down the Coast (she had been born only eight miles off)—she had never travelled anywhere; and many a chat we had.

It was a delightful place to stay at. Just enough sea in the air to make it invigorating; and a sense of remoteness, as of a world apart, filled one with a great peace, and forgetfulness of the minor worries of this life.

I was bent on going farther—there were those olivine rocks and Cascade Point, and even remoter solitudes farther south; but Transome had been making enquiries: there were seventy or eighty miles between us and the farthest possible point; time would not admit of it, and he promised he would bring me back another year. So I had to content myself with one more stage of the Main South Road before we turned our faces homewards across the pass.

There was a breezy joyousness in the air as we set out for Okuru next day—even the horses seemed to feel it. We rode, first through the