The Foot of Time: A Novel of Australia and the South Seas: (1933)

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82 THE FOOT OF TIME
ern world knows! Then the Australian in him saw
his ships filling their bunkers, filling every conceivable
inch of themselves with Australian raw commodities;
filling their cabins with Aussies homeward
bound to the land of their distant fathers for
a spello. He visualised the voyage occupying
twenty days. Then he cut that down even further
by including in his day-dream line of Arbuthnot
boats, a landing deck for airplanes. The mails and
a few Aussie passengers would climb into them at
Marseilles, or earlier, to be shot catapult fashion
into the ether and reach London a few hours later.
And here he was at Orange in the State of New
South Wales, and Edith was approaching to take
him out of his reverie. Through the air came
the sounds of quarrelling. William and Florence
were at it again.
"Avast there, woman! The Almighty forgive
your evil tongue!"
"Stuff and nonsense! Don't tell me ." The
voices faded away. Then they could be heard
again, still at it.
"It's a sin in the eyes of the Almighty. The
air's the Lord's preserve. Minister was only saying
last Sabbath--"
"Don't prattle to me about your church,
man."
"The next one of they planes what flies low
over my acres gets a charge of duck shot into it."
Edith paled slightly. She had reached Bruce's
side and gave his arm a slight squeeze, then quickly
released it.
THE FOOT OF TIME 83
"Let's go into the bush together, shall we?"
Swinton suggested.
"Wouldn't it be lovely?" the girl replied, and
the two left the house party and wandered off
into the mountain-bush. The time had arrived
when Bruce had decided to tell Edith how much
she was to him. To tell her just so much as it
appeared necessary for her to know of his history—
the history of his house and the history of his
father.
They followed a mountain bush track cut between
eternal gum-trees, the everlasting leaf-covered
inhabitants of the Australian continent. Black
and white magpies threw their hollow-sounding,
flute-like cries at them. Kookaburras laughed uproariously
down to them from dead tree branches.
Crickets and grasshoppers hopped away as the
lovers' feet rustled dead leaves on their track. A
flat-tailed lizard disdained to move from its sunbasking,
and had to be stepped over or walked
round. Christmas bush—forbidden plunder—invited
by its delicate pretty coloured flower, but the
Government, wishful to retain to bushland the exceptionally
few colours it holds, put the plucking
of it out of bounds.
Said the boy: "Edith, there is something I want
to talk to you about."
"Is there, Bruce?"
"Yes. I hardly know how to begin—how to tell
you."
"It shouldn't be so difficult," the girl replied,
"especially as—' ,