viii AN AUSTRALIAN " TOPSY " 99 
they couldn't do, what they did was well done, and with 
all their busy life they had time for everything. 
How I did enjoy our bush scrambles in the evening, 
and our afternoon tea out of those dainty cups, the 
delicious home-made cakes and the fruit (my appetite 
notwithstanding the heat was always voracious there) ; 
then the long talks in the cool verandah (with its trellis- 
work of creepers and baskets of orchids), lazily rocking 
ourselves in our easy chairs, with the glorious sun setting 
before us, bathing those rugged, volcanic slopes of Mt 
Sands in purples and golds, and the distant mountains of 
indefinite heights in every shade of pink and blue. The 
long stretches of the Endeavour River, with the town 
below, and the rugged framework of great rocks at the 
foot of the garden, all are before me — but here is the 
sketch ! 
Have I said too much ? But how the wind blows 
here ! And I can assure you that it takes a second 
thought and a strong effort of the will before one makes 
up one's mind to face the perpetual gale, and it takes all 
one's time to keep a hat on and an umbrella from 
blowing inside out One day we paddled our own 
little Rob Roy canoes across the river — they were very 
light, weighing only six or seven pounds, and went like 
the wind, and from the other side I took a sketch of 
the town from the same spot where Captain Cook made 
his, one hundred years ago. 
A black girl the Bauers are training for a maid 
affords us great amusement : she is a really wild 
untamed being from one of the native camps ; only ten 
years old, and wonderfully intelligent, painfully inquisitive, 
and very honest, though, I daresay, she already knows 
the contents of every box and drawer in this house ; 
but is utterly without affection or gratitude, like all her 
race, and yet there is something very winning in her 
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