Page:Through South Westland.djvu/208

120 an end. Sheep pasture took its place with cornfields and hay fields along the wide valley. There were English trees now clustering round little homesteads, and a sunny stretch of country ended at a turquoise-blue line. There lay Lake Wanaka, closed all round by bare mountains which rose in broken peaks and rugged outlines to the south. Verily a different world. The horses seemed to like the change and cantered fast.

Ted would have liked to show the superiority of his mare, and we raced for a stretch, but it was not fair to the horses after their long climb. We drew rein and very soberly we arrived at the Widow Pipson’s. She was standing under the verandah of a little house set in the midst of a field of waving grass; and whether she expected us or not, I don’t know—there had been no one to tell her—but she evinced no surprise, and took me into a sweet little room, supplying all my wants. When I joined the others we sat down to a most appetizing meal. I remember there were chops, and I remember, too, Ted continuing his care of my wants—under all circumstances he was the same competent, commanding person; he ought to have been a commissariat officer or a field-marshal.

Afterwards we stood outside in the warm, still air, watching the setting sun colour the bare mountains hemming in the valley—first blue, then gold, then pink, and lastly grey; and when the hush of evening came with the dusk, we went