“Yes, that’s it,” said Victoria, pleased and proprietary. A boy from the
big red bungalow called to ask if he should bring milk across. The big
red bungalow was a dairy. But Harriet followed eagerly on Jack’s
footsteps across the road. She peeped over the white gate as he
unfastened it. A real lovely brick house, with a roof of bright red
tiles coming down very low over dark wooden verandahs, and huge round
rain-tanks, and a bit of grass and a big shed with double doors. Joy!
The gate was open, and she rushed in, under the tall, over-leaning hedge
that separated them from the neighbour, and that reached almost to touch
the side of her house. A wooden side verandah with bedsteads--old rusty
bedsteads patched with strip and rope--and then grass, a little front
all of grass, with loose hedges on either side--and the sea, the great
Pacific right there and rolling in huge white thunderous rollers not
forty yards away, under her grassy platform of a garden. She walked to
the edge of the grass. Yes, just down the low cliff, really only a bank,
went her own little path, as down a steep bank, and then was smooth
yellow sand, and the long sea swishing white up its incline, and rocks
to the left, and incredible long rollers furling over and crushing down
on the shore. At her feet! At her very feet, the huge rhythmic Pacific.
She turned to the house. There it crouched, with its long windows and
its wide verandah and its various slopes of low, red-tiled roofs.
Perfect! Perfect! The sun had gone down behind the great front of black
mountain wall which she could still see over the hedge. The house inside
was dark, with its deep verandahs like dark eyelids half closed.
Somebody switched on a light. Long cottage windows, and a white ceiling
with narrow dark beams. She rushed indoors. Once more in search of a
home, to be alone with Lovat, where he would be happy. How the sea
thundered!
Harriet liked the house extremely. It was beautifully built, solid, in
the good English fashion. It had a great big room with dark jarrah
timbering on the roof and the walls: it had a dark jarrah floor, and
doors, and some solid, satisfactory jarrah furniture, a big, real table
and a sideboard and strong square chairs with cane seats. The Lord had
sent her here, that was certain.
And how delighted Victoria was with her raptures. Jack whipped his coat
off and went to the shed for wood and coal, and soon had a lavish fire
in the open hearth. A boy came with milk, and another with bread and
fresh butter and eggs, ordered by Mrs Wynne. The big black kettle was
on the fire. And Harriet took Lovat’s arm, she was so moved.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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