“Driving a coach-and-four through the hollowed-out stump of a tree used to be common enough with us,” said Jim. “Not that the four horses mattered: you might as well say ‘and twelve’; it was the width high enough up to take the top of the coach that meant a really big tree. It was easier to make a hollow shell fit for the passage of the coach than to get the whole tree cut down.” “Quite so—quite so,” said the priest. “And I’ve read of church services being held in a hollow tree, in your country. “Rather. We know one that held twenty-two people. It was in a wild part of the bush, and whatever clergyman came along used to use it—Roman Catholic, Protestant, Presbyterian or Baptist; it didn’t matter. Every one used to roll up, for it wasn’t often there was a chance of a church service. There were lots of jobs for the travelling parson, too: all the accumulated weddings and christenings.” “Do you tell me!” said the priest. “My mother had three children before ever a chance came of a baptism,” said Mr. Linton. “Then the three were done together. I was the eldest, and I remember being extremely indignant about it—I was four years old, and it was winter, and the water was cold! It was a standing joke against me afterwards that I had behaved so much worse than my small brother and sister.” He laughed, and then grew grave. “Poor bush mothers! they didn’t have an easy time. Two of my mother’s babies died without ever having seen a clergyman; to the end of her life she worried about the little souls that had gone out unbaptized.” “It was themselves needed great hearts—those pioneer women,” said the priest. “They did; and mostly they had great hearts. But then I think most women have, if the need really comes,” Mr. Linton said. “Thousands of them were delicate, tenderly-reared women, with no experience of bush conditions in a new country; but they made good. Women have a curious way of finding themselves able to tackle any conditions with which they are actually faced. My mother never was strong, and she had no training for work; I expect she was something of a butterfly until she married my father and went off into the Never-Never. She ended by being a kind of oracle for fifty miles round; people used to send for her at all hours of the day or night, in sickness, and she developed a business capacity better than my father’s. I remember her as a little, merry thing: always tired, but never too tired to work for other people. She was only one of thousands of women doing the same thing.” “But the process of learning must have been hard,” said the old priest, pityingly.