After all the emotions of that exciting day Hugh was tired, so next morning found the children sitting quietly in the broad veranda. Prudence busied herself with sewing; Grizzel sat at the table happily absorbed in painting a spray of wattle to send to Mamma. She had placed it in a tall, slender vase of Venetian glass, pale yellow flecked with gold. Hugh lay on the floor, his chin in the hollow of his hands, and his feet alternately tapping the red bricks and waving in the air, as he contemplated a small steam-engine which he had been putting through its paces. Mollie, Dick, and Jerry sat on the veranda steps, the boys printing photographs, while Mollie idly played with the trailing garlands of morning-glory and traveller's joy which hung around her. Between the blossoming almond trees she could see golden splashes of wattle in the field beyond. At her feet a mass of big Russian violets boldly lifted their heads above their leaves, and an acacia, which overshadowed the veranda, was dropping milky petals on the path. Mollie knew all the sweet scents by name now. It was queer, she thought, how the seasons came slipping round, each bringing its own fruit and flowers--here in Australia in Prue's Time, and there in Chauncery in her own Time. She turned her head and stared at the shabby old grandfather clock which stood in a corner of the veranda. For forty years, she thought, its pendulum would slowly swing, till it said "How d'ye do" to the ticking clock in Grannie's morning-room. Forty years was a long time to look forward to. "Jolly nice smells here," Dick remarked. "How ripping the almond blossom looks in the sunshine. We've got an almond tree in our backyard, and once there was an almond on it." "There are thousands of almonds here," Prue said, pausing in her work for a moment and gazing dreamily at the delicate outline of almond branches against the sky. "They are nicest when they are green, but I must say they do give you dreadful pains. I wonder why so many nice things leave a pain. Music does too--and even one's best friends sometimes." "Do you eat your best friends boiled up with green almonds to the tune of 'Good-bye for ever--good-bye, good-bye'?" Dick inquired. They laughed. "There's an old gentleman come to live next door," Prudence continued, taking up her sewing again, "who watches us through a telescope sometimes, and when he sees us in the green-almond trees he writes to Papa. He says it is for our good, old telltale. Once, though, he took us into his library and showed us some beautiful fossils. He said they were as old as Moses, and one of them might be a million years old. It was a fan-shell, quite whole and pretty. Fancy a million years! I wonder what the world will be like in another million years." "Bust," said Dick briefly.