The smooth grass slopes, the wooded stretches will live only in memory. The great red-and-black and silver-limbed gums will be hewn down to make way for spreading civilisation. The blue gracious hills will be thick with chimneys and advertisement boards. There will be a double line of railway, no longer picturesque, and big spreading stations instead of primitive sidings where one held up a 'flag by day and a light at night' to be picked up of the passing train. Past St Leonard's the railway is very new, a matter of months indeed. Before it was opened there were obstacles in the way of reaching Sydney that made would-be residents shake their heads, and go to live at Paddington, and Forest Lodge, and such crowded places that could be reached by tram with a certain degree of comfort. But before the year of grace 1893, the train from the hills that only just escaped being mountains, used to empty out its passengers on the little St Leonard's Station. There were two ways only after that of getting to Sydney. Either one merrily trudged a pathway mile, and then caught a North Shore cable tram to the point where the Ferry boat leaves for the Circular Quay, or one entrusted one's life and well-being to a vehicle that might have been a Noah's Ark, or a bathing machine, or a convict van. In ancient days it used to run between Shoalhaven and Moss-Vale, as its red painted sides still bore witness, but travellers in those parts did better for themselves, so they brought it here, and charged sixpence each way for the twenty-five minutes' journey. Now there is a combination of the railway; pressure was brought to bear, and the New South Wales Government finished in a hurry a work that had dragged on till people despaired of its completion. The line winds down towards the chimneys and smoke of 'The Shore'; one has glimpses from the train of blue bright bays and white sails moored boats, and a broken wharf or two waiting to catch the artist's eye. Then it skirts along the harbour, close to the water, in a semi-circular sweep, and makes an eye-sore. Two years ago, Lavender Bay was beautiful. But about the Red Road. Just at the top of one of the elevations, there was a big stone house standing in the middle of an orange and lemon orchard. Dot's mother lived here by herself. A mile and a half away down the road there was a weather-board cottage in a garden running over with flowers. Larrie and Dot lived here, and the baby of course. They had been going up to 'mother's' the afternoon they quarrelled about carrying the child; they always went on Sundays. Very often Dot went on Mondays too, that was the day Peggie, her _aide-de-camp_, made the cottage unsavoury with soap-suds. Tuesday nights they always had dinner up at the house, Peggie never had time to cook on Tuesdays, there were so many of Dot's dresses and Larrie's shirts, and baby's multitudinous garments to be finely ironed.