‘I see Walter Raleigh, courtier, poet, warrior, sailor, statesman, and can mourn over him, as though I had seen that noblest of heads upon the cruel block but yesterday. I see Francis Drake with his crisp curls and dauntless spirit; I see Columbus ever calm, watchful, indomitable; Ponce de Leon, pacing up and down his lonely beach at Hispaniola, and can fancy him setting forth upon his half-melancholy, half-ludicrous expedition to _la fontain de jouvences_; even Bimini—oh! the many, many friends and companions that have ever been associated with the sea in my mind since my earliest childhood.’ ‘I am afraid,’ said Ernest, translating an unacknowledged thought, ‘that you must be something like a cocoa-palm, or your own Norfolk Island pine, unable to exist out of hearing of the sound of the sea.’ ‘I never thought about that,’ answered the girl with a half-curious look, as if back from the unreal world. ‘I have always fancied that I would do whatever other people would do. But we all have our pet fancies, which we spoil like children, or which spoil us, and the prosaic part of our life has to go on notwithstanding.’ ‘Have you ever seen anything of the bush?’ inquired Ernest. ‘Nothing more than a very hasty visit to one or two of the inland towns. I have always wished to go to a real station and see something of bush life, but papa never could spare me sufficiently long. What is it like? All riding about, from morning to night, and being very sleepy in the evening?’ ‘There is a good deal of that,’ said he, ‘but not quite so much as might be thought. There is a great want of books, and of the habit of reading, in many places, though I know of course that it is not universal. But I think when I have a place of my own that I can manage to unite work and play, real exertion with an intellectual alternation, and this should be the perfection of existence.’ ‘I don’t see why it could not be managed,’ said Antonia. ‘Many of the young squatters have told me that they could not get books, and that they were becoming frightfully ignorant; but I always said it must be their own fault. Any one who _must_ read will read, no matter what their circumstances are.’ ‘So I believe,’ answered Ernest, with most appreciative accents. ‘When young people, or people of any age, say they have not time to read, it sounds in my ears as if they said that they had not time to eat their dinners, or to bathe, or say their prayers, or to talk to their friends. For these duties and other distractions they generally find leisure, and if the time be really fully occupied, a quarter of an hour almost in converse with some authors would provide the mind with new and instructive thoughts for the whole livelong day.’ ‘Well, we must see how Mr. Neuchamp carries out his ideas when he has a station of his own,’ said Antonia archly. ‘He must have everything very nice, very superior to the ordinary ways of colonists, and must make money also; _that_ is indispensable.’