Here honest Ned, his eyes glistening, and his ugly little face glowing with emotion through its coating of sunburn, paused, as if he did not like to go on.

I was more touched and interested than I could avoid showing, and cried, "Oh, do tell me, Palmer, what became of the poor fellow! Did he die?"

Ned cleared his throat, and moved so as to get between me and the light from the door, as he said huskily, "He came very nigh to it, ma'am. I never did set eyes on such a decent patient chap as that man was. I did the very wust thing I could a' done, the town doctors told me, for I brought him into the hut, instead o' keeping him outdoors and rubbing his poor black legs with snow. 'Stead o' that, I wrapped him up warm in my own blankets, after I had chipped his boots and the hice off of 'em, and I made up a roarin' fire. Good Lord, how the poor fellow groaned when he begun to get warm! I gave him a pannikin full o' hot tea, with a drop o' grog in it, and that seemed to make him awful bad. At last he said, with the sweat from sheer agony pouring down his face, "Look here, matey: couldn't you hump me out in the snow again? for it aint nigh so bad to bear it cold as it is to bear it hot." Not a bad word did he say, ma'am, and he tried not to give in more nor he could help; but he was clean druv wild with the hanguish in his legs.

"Presently I remembers, quite sudden like, that a bush doctor, name of Tomkins, was likely to be round by Simmons, cos' o' his missus. So I got on my 'oss in a minnit, and I rides off and fetches him, for sure enough he was there; and though Simmons' missis wasn't to say over her troubles, she spoke up from behind the curtain of red blanket she had put up in her tidy little hut, and bade old Tomkins go with me. May God bless her and hers for that same, say I! Well, ma'am, when Tomkins come back with me and saw the poor fellow (he was fair shoutin' with the pain in his legs by then), he said nothin' could be done. "They'll mortify by morrow mornin'," says he, "and then he'll die easy." So with that he goes back with the first light next day, to Simmons. Sure enough, the poor fellow did get a bit easier next day, and I felt clear mad to think he was goin' to die before my very eyes. "Not if I can help it!" I cries, quite savage like. But he only smiled a patient smile, and said, "God's will be done, mate. He knows best, and I aint in any pain to speak of, now."

"By and bye I hears a rumbling and a creaking, and cracking of whips; and when I looks out, what do I see but the bullock-dray from Simmons' coming up the flat. It was the only thing on wheels within forty mile, and Simmons had brought it his own self to see if we couldn't manage to get the poor fellow down to the nighest town. I won't make my yarn no longer than I can help, ma'am, so I'll only mention that we made a lot o' the strongest mutton broth you ever tasted; we slung a hammock of red blankets in the dray, and we got the poor fellow down by evening to a gentleman's station. There they made us kindly welcome, did all they could for him, and transhipped the hammock into a pair-horse dray, which went quicker and was easier. We got on as fast as we could every step of the way, and by midnight that poor fellow was tucked into a clean bed in the hospital at Christchurch, with both his legs neatly cut off just above the knee, for there wasn't a minute to lose."

I was almost afraid to inquire how the sufferer fared, for Ned's eyes were fairly swimming with unshed tears; but he smiled brightly, and said, "The ladies and gentlemen in the town, they set up a subscribetion, and bought the poor chap a first-rate pair o' wooden legs, and he could even manage to ride about after a bit; and instead o' wandering about looking for country, or gold, or what not, he settled down as a carrier, and throve and did well. And I was thinking, ma'am, as how I'd like to return thanks for that poor fellow's wonderful recovery, for I've never had a chance of going to Church since, and its nigh upon two years ago that it happened."

"So you shall, Ned: so you shall!" we said with one voice. And so at our first Church gathering at our dear little antipodean home, F——, who acted as our minister, paused in the beautiful Thanksgiving Service, after he had read solemnly and slowly the simple words, "Especially for Thy late mercies vouchsafed to ——," and Ned Palmer chimed in with an "Amen,"—misplaced, indeed, but none the less hearty, and delightful to hear.



Chapter X: Swaggers.

Dr. Johnson did not know the somewhat vulgar word which heads this paper. At least he did not know it as a noun, but gives "swagger: v.n., to bluster, bully, brag;" but the Slang Dictionary admits it as a word, springing indeed from the thieves' vocabulary: "one who carries a swag." Neither of these books however give the least idea of the true meaning of the expression, which is as fully recognised as an honest word in both Australia and New Zealand as any other combination of letters in the English language. A swagger is the very antithesis then of a swaggerer, for, whereas, the one is full of pretension and abounds in unjust claims on our notice, the swagger is humility and civility itself. He knows, poor weary tramp, that on the favourable impression he makes upon the "boss," depends his night's lodging and food, as well as a job of work in the future. We will leave then the ideal swaggerer to some other biographer who may draw glowing word-pictures of him in all his jay's splendour, and we will confine ourselves to describing the real swagger, clad in flannel shirt, moleskin trowsers, and what were once thick boots, but might now be used as sieves.

Nothing astonished me so much in my New Zealand Station Life as these visitors. Even Sir Roger de Coverley himself would have looked with distrust upon most of our swagger-guests, and yet I never heard of an instance in our part of the country where the unhesitating, ungrudging hospitality extended by the rich squatters to their poorer compatriots was ever abused. I say "in our part," because unfortunately, wherever gold is discovered, either in quartz or riverbed, the good old primitive customs and ways die out of themselves in a few weeks, and each mammon-seeker looks with distrust on a stranger. Only fifty or sixty miles from us, as the crow might fly across the snowy range, where an immense Bush clothes the banks of the Hokitika river right down to its sand-filled mouth on the West Coast, the great gold diggings broke out seven or eight years ago, and changed the face of society in that district in a few days. There a swagger meant a man who might rob or murder you in your sleep after you had fed and lodged him; or—under the most favourable circumstances supposing him to be a "milder mannered man,"—a "fossicker," who would not hesitate to "jump your claim," or hang about when you are prospecting, to watch how much of the colour you found, and then go off stealthily to return next day at the head of a "rush" of a thousand diggers.

Even before the famous Maungatapu murders in 1866, swaggers were looked upon with distrust on the West Coast, and after that date hardly any one travelled in those parts without carrying a small revolver in his breast-pocket. Nothing is more tantalising than an allusion to a circumstance which is not well-known; and as I feel certain that very few of my readers have ever heard of what may be called the first great crime committed in the Middle Island, a brief account of that terrible tragedy may not be out of place. Gold of course was at the bottom of it, but the canvas-bags full of the glittering flakes were red with blood by the time they reached the bank at Nelson. The diggings on the West Coast were only two years old at that date, and although it was not uncommon for prospecting parties cutting their way, axe in hand, through the thick bush, to come upon skeletons of men in lonely places, still it might be taken for granted that these were the remains of early explorers or travellers who had got lost and starved to death within the green tangled walls of this impenetrable forest. The scenery of that part of the Middle Island is far more beautiful than in the agricultural or pastoral districts. Giant Alps clothed half up their steep sides with evergreen pines,—whose dark forms end abruptly where snow and ice begin,—stand out against a pure sky of more than Italian blue, and only when a cleared saddle is reached can the traveller look down over the wooded hills and vallies rolling away inland before him, or turn his eyes sea-ward to the bold coast with its many rivers, whose wide mouths foam right out to where the great Pacific waves are heaving under the bright winter sun.

Such, and yet still more fair must have been the prospect on which Burgess, Kelly, Levy, and Sullivan's eyes rested one June morning in the mid-winter of 1866. They were, one and all, originally London thieves, and had been transported years before to the early penal settlements of Australia. From thence they had managed, by fair means and foul, to work their way to other places, and had latterly been living in the Middle Island, earning what they could by horse-breaking and divers odd jobs. But your true convict hates work with a curiously deadly hatred, and these four men agreed to go and look round them at the new West Coast diggings. They found, however, that there, as elsewhere, it would be necessary to work hard, so in disgust at seeing the nuggets and dust which rewarded the toil of more industrious men, they left Hokitika and reached Nelson on their way to Picton, the chief town of the adjoining province of Marlborough. Most of the gold found its way under a strongly armed escort to the banks in both these towns, but it was well-known that fortunate diggers occasionally travelled together, unarmed, and laden with "dust." So safe had been the roads hitherto, that the commonest precautions were not taken, nor the least secrecy observed about travellers' movements.

It was therefore no mystery that four unarmed diggers, carrying a considerable number of ounces of gold-dust with them, were going to start from the Canvas-town diggings for Nelson on a certain day, and the men I have mentioned set out to meet them. One part of their long journey led them over the Maungatapu range by a saddle, which in its lowest part is 2,700 feet above the sea-level. The night before the murder, the victims and their assassins camped out with only ten miles between them. So lonely and deserted was the rough mountain track, that the appearance of a poor old man named Battle alarmed Burgess and his gang dreadfully, and they immediately murdered him, in order that he should not report having passed them on the road. Between the commission of this act of precaution and the arrival of the little band of travellers, no one else was seen. Burgess appears to have shown some of the qualities of a good general; for he selected a spot where the only path wound along a steep side-cutting, less than six feet wide, with an unbroken forest on the upper, and a mass of tangled bush on the lower side. As the doomed men approached the murderers sprang out, and each thrusting a revolver close to their faces, called on them "to hold up their hands." This is an old bushranger challenge, and is meant to ensure perfect quiescence on the part of the victim. The travellers mechanically complied, and in this way were instantly separated, led to different spots, and ruthlessly shot dead.

It was all over in a moment: Burgess and his men flung the bodies down among the tangled bush, and returned to Nelson rejoicing exceedingly over the simple and easy means by which they had possessed themselves of several hundred pounds. Of course they calculated on the usual supine indifference to other people's affairs, which prevails in busy gold-seeking communities; but in this instance the public seemed to be suddenly seized by a violent and inconvenient curiosity to find out what had become of the four men who were known to have started from Canvas-town two or three days before. No one ever dreamed of a murder having been committed, not even when another "swagger" reached Nelson and stated that he had followed the diggers on the road, only a mile or so behind, had suddenly lost sight of them at the spot I have mentioned, and had never been able to overtake them. Instead of leaving the now excited little town, or keeping quiet, Burgess, Kelly, Levy, and Sullivan, may truly be said to have become "swaggerers;" for they loitered about the place, ostentatiously displaying their bags of gold dust. Unsuspicious as the Nelson people were, they acted upon a sort of instinct,—that instinct within us which answers so mysteriously to the cry of blood from the earth,—and arrested these four men. Still, the matter might have ended there for lack of a clue, if one of the party, Sullivan, had not suddenly turned informer, and led the horrified town's-people to the jungle which concealed the bodies. Here my dreadful story may end; for we need not follow the course of the trial, which resulted in the complete conviction of the three other men. I have only dwelt on so horrible a theme in order to make my readers understand how natural it was that I should feel nervous, when it became apparent to my understanding that the custom of the country demanded that you should ask no questions, but simply tell any travellers who claimed your hospitality where they were to sleep, and send them in large supplies of mutton, flour, and tea.

On one occasion it chanced that F——, our stalwart cadet Mr. A——, and the man who did odd jobs about the place, were all on the point of setting out upon some expedition, when a party of four swaggers made their appearance just at sundown. No true swagger ever appears earlier, lest he might be politely requested to "move on" to the next station; whereas if he times his arrival exactly when "the shades of night are falling fast," no boss could be hard-hearted enough to point to mist-covered hills and valleys, which are a net-work of deep creeks and swamps, and desire the wayfarer to go on further. Once, and only once, did I know of such a thing being done; but I will not say more about that unfortunate at this moment, for I want to claim the pity of all my lady readers for the very unprotected position I am trying to depict. F—— could not understand my nervousness, and did not reassure me by saying, as he mounted his horse, "I've told them to sleep in the stable. I am pretty sure they are run-away sailors, they seem so footsore. Good-bye! don't expect me until you see me!"

Now I was a very new chum in those days, and had just heard of the Maungatapu murders. These guests of mine looked most disreputable, and were all powerful young men. I do not believe there was a single lock or bolt or bar on any door in the whole of the little wooden house: the large plate-chest stood outside in the verandah, and my dressing-case could have been carried off through the ever-open bedroom window by an enterprising thief of ten years old. As for my two maids,—the only human beings within reach,—they were as perfectly useless on any emergency as if they had been wax dolls. One of them had the habit of fainting if anything happened, and the other used to tend her until she revived, when they both sat still and shrieked. Their nerves had once been tested by a carpenter, who was employed about the house, and cut his hand badly; on another occasion by the kitchen chimney which took fire; and that was the way they behaved each time. So it was useless to look upon their presence as any safeguard; indeed one of them speedily detected a fancied likeness to Burgess in one of the poor swaggers, and shrieked every time she saw him.

We were indeed three "lone, 'lorn women," all through that weary night. I could not close my eyes; but laid awake listening to the weka's shrill call, or the melancholy cry of the bitterns down in the swamp. With the morning light came hope and courage; and I must say I felt ashamed of my suspicions when my cook came to announce that the "swaggers was just agoin' off, and wishful to say good-bye. They've been and washed up the tin plates and pannikins and spoons as clean as clean can be; and the one I thought favoured Burgess so much, mum, he's been and draw'd water from the well, all that we shall want to-day; and they're very civil, well-spoken chaps, if you please, mum!" F—— was right in his surmise, I fancy; for there were plenty of tattooed pictures of anchors and ships on the brawny bare arms of my departing guests. They seemed much disappointed to find there was no work to be had on our station; but departed, with many thanks and blessings, "over the hills and far away."

Latterly, with increasing civilization and corresponding social economy, there have been many attempts made by new-fangled managers of runs, more than by the run-holders themselves, to induce these swaggers to work for their tucker,—to use pure colonial phraseology. Several devices have been tried, such as taking away their swags (i.e., their red blankets rolled tightly into a sort of pack, which they carry on their backs, and derive their name from), and locking them up until they had chopped a small quantity of wood, or performed some other trifling domestic duty. But the swagger will be led, though not driven, and what he often did of his own accord for the sake of a nod or a smile of thanks from my pretty maid-servants, he would not do for the hardest words which ever came out of a boss's mouth. There are also strict rules of honesty observed among these men, and if one swagger were to purloin the smallest article from a station which had fed and sheltered him, every other swagger in all the country side would immediately become an amateur detective to make the thief give up his spoil. A pair of old boots was once missing from a neighbouring station, and suspicion fell upon a swagger. Justice was perhaps somewhat tardy in this instance, as it rested entirely in the hands of every tramp who passed that way; but at the end of some months the boots were found at home, and the innocence of the swaggers, individually and collectively, triumphantly established.

The only instance of harshness to a swagger which came under my notice during three years residence in New Zealand, is the one I have alluded to above, and contains so much dramatic interest in its details, that it may not be out of place here.

Although I have naturally dwelt in these papers more upon our bright sunny weather, our clear, bracing winter days, and our balmy spring and autumn evenings, let no intending traveller think that he will not meet with bad weather at the Antipodes! I can only repeat what I have said with pen and voice a hundred times before. New Zealand possesses a very capricious and disagreeable climate: disagreeable from its constant high winds: but it is perhaps the most singularly and remarkably healthy place in the world. This must surely arise from the very gales which I found so trying to my temper, for damp is a word without meaning; as for mildew or miasma, the generation who are growing up there will not know the meaning of the words; and in spite of a warm, bright day often turning at five minutes warning into a snowy or wet afternoon, colds and coughs are almost unknown. People who go out there with delicate lungs recover in the most surprising manner; surprising, because one expects the sudden changes of temperature, the unavoidable exposure to rain and even snow, to kill instead of curing invalids. But the practice is very unlike the theory in this case, and people thrive where they ought to die.

During my first winter in Canterbury we had only one week of really bad weather, but I felt at that time as if I had never realized before what bad weather meant. A true "sou'-wester" was blowing from the first to the second Monday in that July, without one moment's lull. The bitter, furious blast swept down the mountain gorges, driving sheets of blinding rain in a dense wall before it. Now and then the rain turned into large snow-flakes, or the wind rose into such a hurricane that the falling water appeared to be flashing over the drenched earth without actually touching it. Indoors we could hardly hear ourselves speak for the noise of the wind and rain against the shingle roof. It became a service of danger, almost resembling a forlorn hope, to go out and drag in logs of wet wood, or draw water from the well,—for, alas, there were no convenient taps or snug coal-holes in our newly-erected little wooden house. We husbanded every scrap of mutton, in very different fashion to our usual reckless consumption, the consumption of a household which has no butcher's bill to pay; for we knew not when the shepherd might be able to fight his way through the storm, with half a sheep packed before him, on sturdy little "Judy's" back. The creeks rose and poured over their banks in angry yellow floods. Every morning casualties in the poultry yard had to be reported, and that week cost me almost as many fowls and ducks as my great christening party did. The first thing every morning when I opened my eyes I used to jump up and look out of the different windows with eager curiosity, to see if there were any signs of a break in the weather, for I was quite unaccustomed to be pent up like a besieged prisoner for so many succeeding days. We did not boast of shutters in those regions, and even blinds were a luxury which were not wasted in the little hall. Consequently, when my unsatisfactory wanderings about the silent house—for no one else was up—led me that dreadful stormy morning into the narrow passage called the back-hall, I easily saw through its glass-door what seemed to me one of the most pathetic sights my eyes had ever rested upon.

Just outside the verandah, which is the invariable addition to New Zealand houses, stood, bareheaded, a tall, gaunt figure, whose rain-sodden garments clung closely to its tottering limbs. A more dismal morning could not well be imagined: the early dawn struggling to make itself apparent through a downpour of sleet and rain, the howling wind (which one could almost see as it drove the vapour wall before it), and the profound solitude and silence of all except the raging storm.

At first I thought I must be dreaming, so silent and hopeless stood that weird figure. My next impulse, without staying to consider my dishevelled hair and loose wrapper, was to open the door and beckon the poor man within the shelter of the verandah. When once I had got him there I did not exactly know what to do with my guest, for neither fire nor food could be procured quite so early. He crouched like a stray dog down on the dripping mat outside the door, and murmured some unintelligible words. In this dilemma I hastened to wake up poor F——, who found it difficult to understand why I wanted him to get up at daylight during a "sou'-wester." But I entreated him to go to the hall door, whilst I flew off to get my lazy maids out of their warm beds. With all their faults, they did not need much rousing on that occasion. I suppose I used very forcible words to convey the misery of the object standing outside, for I know that Mary was in floods of tears, and had fastened her gown on over her night-gear, whilst I was still speaking; and the cook had tumbled out of bed, and was kneeling before the kitchen fire with her eyes shut, kindling a blaze, apparently, in her sleep.

As soon as things were in this forward state, I returned to the verandah, and found our swagger guest drawing a very long breath after a good nip of pure whisky which F—— had promptly administered to him. "I'm fair clemmed wi' cold and wet," the swagger said, still bundled up in his comparatively sheltered corner. "I've been out on the hills the whole night, and I am deadbeat. Might I stop here for a bit?" He asked this very doubtfully, for it is quite against swagger etiquette to demand shelter in the morning. For all answer he was taken by the shoulder, and helped up. I never shall forget the poor tramp's deprecating face, as he looked back at me, whilst he was being led through the pretty little dining-room, with its bright carpet, on which his clay-clogged boots and dripping garments left a muddy, as well as a watery track. "All right," I said, with colonial brevity; and so we escorted our strange guest through the house into the kitchen, where the ever-ready kettle and gridiron were busy preparing tea and chops over a blazing fire. Of course the maids screamed when they saw us, and I do not wonder at their doing so, for neither F—— nor I looked very respectable, with huddled on dressing-gowns and towzled hair; whilst our foot-sore, drenched guest subsided into a chair by the door, covered his wretched pinched face with two bony hands, and burst into tears. I certainly never expected to see a swagger cry, and F—— declared the sight was quite as new to him as to me. However, the poor man's tears and helplessness gave fresh energy to my maids' treacherous nerves, and they even suggested dry clothes. Our good-natured cadet, who at this moment appeared on the scene, was only too happy to find some outlet for his superfluous benevolence, and hastened off, to return in a moment or two with an old flannel shirt, dry and whole, in spite of its faded stripes, a pair of moleskin trousers, and a huge pair of canvas cricketing shoes. It was no time for ceremony, so we women retreated for a few minutes into the store-room, whilst F—— and Mr. A—— made the swagger's toilette, getting so interested in their task as even to part his dripping hair out of his eyes. He had no swag, poor fellow, having lost his roll of red blankets in one of the treacherous bog-holes across the range.

That man was exactly like a lost, starving dog. He ate an enormous breakfast, curled himself upon some empty flour-sacks in a dry corner of the kitchen, and slept till dinner time; then another sleep until the supper hour, and so on, the round of he clock. All this time he never spoke, though we were dying to hear how he had come into such a plight. The "sou'-wester" still raged furiously out of doors without a moment's cessation, and we were obliged to have recourse to the tins of meat kept in the store-room for such an emergency. The shepherd told us afterwards he had ventured out to look for some wethers, his own supply being exhausted, but the whole mob had hidden themselves so cleverly that neither man nor dog could discover their place of shelter. On the Monday night, exactly a week after the outbreak of bad weather; the skies showed signs of having exhausted themselves, and nature began to wear a sulky air, as if her temper were but slowly recovering herself. The learned in such matters, however, took a cheerful view of affairs, and declared the worst to be over,—"for this bout,"—as they cautiously added.

Whether it was the three days of rest, warmth, and good food which unlocked the swagger's heart, or not, I do not pretend to decide; but that evening, over a pipe in the kitchen, he confided to Mr. A——that he had been working his way down to the sea-coast from a station where he had been employed, very far back in the hill ranges. The "sou'-wester" had overtaken him about twenty miles from us, but only five from another station, where he had applied towards the evening for shelter, being even then drenched with rain, and worn out by struggling through such a tremendous storm. There, for some reason which I confess did not seem very clear, he had been refused the unvarying hospitality extended in New Zealand to all travellers, rich or poor, squatter or swagger, and had been directed to take a short cut across the hills to our station, which he was assured could easily be reached in an hour or two more. The track, a difficult one enough to strike in summer weather, became, indeed, impossible to discover amid rushing torrents and driving wind and rain; besides which, as the poor fellow repeated more than once during his story, "I was fair done up when I set out, for I'd been travelling all day." Mr. A—— told us what the man had been saying, before we all went to bed, adding, "He seems an odd, surly kind of creature, for although he declares he is going away the first thing to-morrow, if the rain be over, I noticed he never said a word approaching to thanks."

The rain was indeed over next morning, and a flood of brilliant sunshine awoke me "bright and early," as the country people say. It seemed impossible to stop in bed, so I jumped up, thrust my feet into slippers, and my arms into a warm dressing-gown, and sallied forth, opening window after window, so as to let the sunshine into rooms which not even a week's steady down-pour could render damp. What a morning it was, and for mid-winter too! No haze, or fog, or vapour on all the green hills, whose well-washed sides were glistening in a bright glow of sunlight. For the first time, too, since the bad weather had set in, was to be heard the incessant bleat which is music to the ears of a New Zealand sheep-farmer. White, moving, calling patches on the hillsides told that the sheep were returning to their favourite pastures, and a mob of horses could be descried quietly feeding on the sunny flat.

But I had no eyes for beauties of mountain or sky. I could do nothing but gaze on the strange figure of the silent swagger, who knelt yes, positively knelt, on the still wet and shining shingle which formed an apology for a gravel path up to the back-door of the little wooden homestead. His appearance was very different to what it had been three days before. Now his clothes were dry and clean and mended,—my Irish maids doing; bless their warm hearts! He had cobbled up his boots himself, and his felt hat, which had quite recovered from its drenching, lay at his side. The perfect rest and warmth and good food had filled up his hollow cheeks, but still his countenance was a curious one; and never, until my dying day, can I forget the rapture of entreaty on that man's upturned face. It brings the tears into my own eyes now to recollect its beseeching expression. I do not think I ever saw prayer before or since. He did not perceive me, for I had hidden behind a sheltering curtain, to listen to his strange, earnest petitions; so he could not know that anybody in the house was stirring, for he knelt at the back, and all my fussings had taken place in the front, and he could not, therefore, have been doing anything for effect.

There, exactly where he had crouched a wretched, way-worn tramp in pouring rain, he knelt now with the flood of sunshine streaming down on his uplifted face, whilst he prayed for the welfare and happiness, individually and collectively, of every living creature within the house. Then he stood up and lifted his hat from the ground; but before he replaced it on his head, he turned, with a gesture which would have made the fortune of any orator,—a gesture of mingled love and farewell, and solemnly blessed the roof-tree which had sheltered him in his hour of need. I could not help being struck by the extraordinarily good language in which he expressed his fervent desires, and his whole bearing seemed quite different to that of the silent, half-starved man we had kept in the kitchen these last three days. I watched him turn and go, noiselessly closing the garden gate after him, and—shall I confess it?—my heart has always felt light whenever I think of that swagger's blessing. When we all met at breakfast I had to take his part, and tell of the scene I had witnessed; for everybody was inclined to blame him for having stolen away, scarcely without saying good-bye, or expressing a word of thanks for the kindness he had received. But I knew better.

From the sublime to the ridiculous we all know the step is but short, especially in the human mind; and to my tender mood succeeds the recollection of an absurd panic we once suffered from, about swaggers. Exaggerated stories had reached us, brought by timid fat men on horseback, with bulky pocket-books, who came to buy our wethers for the Hokitika market, of "sticking up" having broken out on the west land. I fear my expressions are often unintelligible to an English reader, but in this instance I will explain. "Sticking up" is merely a concise colonial rendering of "Your money or your life," and was originally employed by Australian bushrangers, those terrible freebooters whose ranks used to be always recruited from escaped convicts. Fortunately we had no community of that class, only a few prisoners kept in a little ricketty wooden house in Christchurch, from which an enterprising baby might easily have escaped. I dare say as we get more civilized out there, we shall build ourselves handsome prisons and penitentiaries; but in those early days a story was current of a certain jailor who let all his captives out on some festal occasion, using the tremendous threat, that whoever had not returned by eight o'clock should be "locked out!"

But to return to that particular winter evening. We had been telling each other stories which we had heard or read of bushranging exploits, until we were all as nervous as possible. Ghosts, or even burglar stories, are nothing to the horror of a true bushranger story, and F—— had made himself particularly ghastly and disagreeable by giving a minute account of an adventure which had been told to him by one of the survivors.

We listened, with the wind howling outside, to F——'s horrid second-hand story, of how one fine day up country, eight or ten men,—station hands,—were "stuck up" by one solitary bushranger, armed to the teeth. He tied them up one by one, and seated them all on a bench in the sun, and deliberately fired at and wounded the youngest of the party; then, seized with compunction, he unbound one of the captives, and stood over him, revolver in hand, whilst he saddled and mounted a horse, to go for a doctor to set the poor boy's broken leg. Before the messenger had gone "a league, a league, but barely twa',"—the freebooter recollected that he might bring somebody else back with him besides the doctor, and flinging himself across his horse, rode after the affrighted man, and coolly shot him dead. I really don't know how the story ended: I believe everybody perished; but at this juncture I declared it to be impossible to sit up any longer to listen to such tragedies, and went to bed.

Exactly at midnight,—the proper hour for ghosts; burglars, and bushrangers, and such "small deer" to be about, everybody was awakened simultaneously by a loud irregular knocking, which sounded with hollow reverberations all through the wooden house. "Bushrangers!" we all thought, every one of us; for although burglars may not usually knock at hall-doors in England, it is by no means uncommon for their bolder brethren to do so at the other end of the world. It is such a comfort to me now, looking back on that scene to remember that our stalwart cadet was as frightened as anybody. He stood six feet one in his stockings, and was a match for any two in the country side, and yet, I am happy to think, he was as bad as any one. As for me, to say that my heart became like water and my knees like soft wax, is to express in mild words my state of abject terror. There was no need to inquire what the maids thought, for smothered shrieks, louder and louder as each peal of knocks vibrated through the little house, proclaimed sufficiently their sentiments on the subject.

Dear me, how ridiculous it all must have been! In one corner of the ceiling of our bedroom was a little trap-door which opened into an attic adjoining that where the big cadet slept. Now whilst F—— was hurriedly taking down his double-barrelled gun from its bracket just below this aperture, and I held the candlestick with so shaky a hand that the extinguisher clattered like a castanet, this door was slowly lifted up, and a large white face, with dishevelled stubbly hair and wide-open blue eyes, looked down through the cobwebs, saying in a husky whisper, "Could you let me have a rifle, or any thing?" This was our gallant cadet, who had no idea of presenting himself at a disadvantage before the foe. I had desperately seized a revolver, but F—— declared that if I persisted in carrying it I certainly should go first, as he did not wish to be shot in the back.

We held a hurried council of war,—Mr. A—— assisting through the trap door, and the maids breathing suggestions through the partition-planks,—but the difficulty consisted in determining at which door the knocking was going on. Some said one, and some another (for there were many modes of egress from the tiny dwelling); but at last F—— cried decidedly, "We must try them all in succession," and shouldering his gun, with the revolver sticking in the girdle of his dressing-gown, sallied valiantly forth. I don't know what became of Mr. A——: I believe he took up a position with the rifle pointing downwards; the maids retreated beneath their blankets, and I (too frightened to stay behind) followed closely, armed with an Indian boar-spear. F—— flung the hall door wide open, and called out, "Who's there?" but no one answered. The silence was intense, and so was the cold; therefore we returned speedily indoors to consult. "It must be at the back door," I urged; adding, "that is the short cut down the valley, where bushrangers would be most likely to come." "Bushrangers, you silly child!" laughed F——. "It's most likely a belated swagger, or else somebody who is playing us a trick." However as he spoke a succession of fierce and loud knocks resounded through the whole house. "It must be at the kitchen door," F—— said. "Come along, and stand well behind me when I open the door."

But we never opened the door; for on our way through the kitchen, with its high-pitched and unceiled roof,—a very cavern for echoes,—we discovered the source of the noise, and of our fright. Within a large wooden packing-case lay a poor little lamb, and its dying throes had wakened us all up, as it kicked expiring kicks violently against the side of the box. It was my doing bringing it indoors, for I never could find it in my heart to leave a lamb out on the hills if we came across a dead ewe with her baby bleating desolately and running round her body. F—— always said, "You cannot rear a merino lamb indoors; the poor little thing will only die all the same in a day or two;" and then I am sorry to say he added in an unfeeling manner, "They are not worth much now," as if that could make any difference! I had brought this, as I had brought scores of others, home in my arms from a long distance off; fed it out of a baby's bottle, rubbed it dry, and put it to sleep in a warm bed of hay at the bottom of this very box. They had all died quietly, after a day or two, in spite of my devotion and nursing, but this little foundling kicked herself out of the world with as much noise as would have sufficed to summon a garrison to surrender. It is all very well to laugh at it now, but we were, five valiant souls in all, as thoroughly frightened at the time as we could well be.

The only real harm a swagger did me was to carry off one of my best maidservants as his wife, but as he had 300 pounds in the bank at Christchurch, and was only travelling about looking for work, and they have lived in great peace and prosperity ever since, I suppose I ought not to complain. This swagger was employed in deepening our well, and Mary was always going to see how he was getting on, so he used to make love to her, looking up from the bottom of a deep shaft, and shouting compliments to her from a depth of sixty feet. What really won her Irish heart, though, was his calmly putting a rival, a shepherd, into a water-butt. She could not resist that, so they were married, and are doing well.

Let no one despise swaggers. They are merely travelling workmen, and would pay for their lodging if it was the custom to do so. I am told that even now they are fast becoming things of the past; for one could not "swagger" by railroad, and most of our beautiful happy vallies will soon have a line of rails laid down throughout its green and peaceful length.



Chapter X: Changing servants.

To the eyes of an English housewife the title of this chapter must appear a very bad joke indeed, and the amusement what the immortal Mrs. Poyser would call "a poor tale." Far be it from me to make light of the misery of a tolerably good servant coming to you after three months' service, just as you were beginning to feel settled and comfortable, and announcing with a smile that she was going to be married; or, with a flood of tears, that she found it "lonesome." Either of these two contingencies was pretty sure to arise at least four times a year on a station.

At first I determined to do all I could to make their new home so attractive to my two handmaidens that they would not wish to leave it directly. In one of Wilkie Collins' books an upholsterer is represented as saying that if you want to domesticate a woman, you should surround her with bird's-eye maple and chintz. That must have been exactly my idea, for the two rooms which I prepared for my maidservants were small, indeed, yet exquisitely pretty. Of course I should not have been so foolish as to buy any of the unnecessary and dainty fittings with which they were decorated, but as all the furniture and belongings of an English house, a good deal larger than our station home, had been taken out to it, there were sundry toilet tables, etc., whose destination would have been a loft over the stable, if I had not used them for my maids.

I had seen and chosen two very respectable young women in Christchurch, one as a cook, and the other as a housemaid. The cook, Euphemia by name, was a tall, fat, flabby woman, with a pasty complexion, but a nice expression of face, and better manners than usual. She turned out to be very good natured, perfectly ignorant though willing to learn, and was much admired by the neighbouring cockatoos, or small farmers. Lois the housemaid, was the smallest and skimpiest and most angular girl I ever beheld. At first I regarded her with deep compassion, imagining that she was about fifteen years of age, and had been cruelly ill-treated and starved. How she divined what was passing in my mind I cannot tell, but during our first interview she suddenly fired up, and informed me that she was twenty-two years old, that she was the seventh child of a seventh child, and therefore absolutely certain to achieve some wonderful piece of good luck; and furthermore, that she had been much admired in her own part of the country, and was universally allowed to be "the flower of the province." This statement, delivered with great volubility and defiant jerkiness of manner, rather took my breath away; but it was a case of "Hobson's choice" just then about servants, and as I was assured she was a respectable girl, I closed with her terms (25 pounds a year and all found) on the spot. The fat pale cook was to get 35 pounds. Now-a-days I hear that wages are somewhat lower, but the sums I have named were the average figures of six or seven years ago, especially "up-country."

Here I feel impelled to repeat the substance of what I have stated elsewhere,—that these rough, queer servants were, as a general rule, perfectly honest, and of irreproachable morals, besides working, in their own curious fashion, desperately hard. Our family was an exceptionally small one, and the "place" was considered "light, you bet," but even then it seemed to me as if both my domestics worked very hard. In the first place there was the washing; two days severe work, under difficulties which they thought nothing of. All the clothes had to be taken to a boiler fixed in the side of a hill, for the convenience of the creek, and washed and rinsed under a blazing sun (for of course it never was attempted on a wet day) and amid clouds of sand-flies. Not until evening was this really hard day's work over, and the various garments fluttering in the breeze up a valley behind the house. The chances were strongly in favour of a tremendous nor'-wester coming down this said valley during the night, and in that case there would not be a sign next morning of any of the clothes. Heavy things, such as sheets or table cloths, might be safely looked for under lee of the nearest gorse hedge, but it would be impossible even to guess where the lighter and more diaphanous articles had been whisked to. A week afterwards the shepherds used to bring in stray cuffs and collars, and upon one occasion "Judy," the calf, was discovered in a paddock hard by, breakfasting off my best pocket handkerchiefs with an excellent appetite. Of course everything was dirty, and needed to be washed over again. We had a mangle, which greatly simplified matters on the second day, but it used not to be uncommon on back-country stations to get up the fine things with a flat stone, heated in the wood ashes, for an iron. After the washing operations had been brought to a more or less successful ending, there came the yeast making and the baking, followed by the brewing of sugar beer, preserves had to be made, bacon cured, all sorts of things to be done, besides the daily duties of scrubbing and cleaning, and cooking at all hours for stray visitors or "swaggers."

But I am overcome with contrition at perceiving into what a digression I have wandered; having strayed from my maids' rooms to their duties. They arrived as usual on a dray late in the evening, tired and wearied enough, poor souls. In those early days I had not yet plucked up courage to try my hand in the kitchen, and our meals had been left to the charge of F——, who, whatever he may be in other relations of life, is a vile cook; and our good-natured cadet Mr. U——, who was exceedingly willing, but profoundly ignorant of the elements of cookery. For fear of being tempted into another digression, I will briefly state that during that week I lived in a chronic state of hunger and heartburn, and sought forgetfulness from repeated attacks of indigestion, by decorating my servants' rooms. They opened into each other, and it would have been hard to find two prettier little nests. Each had its shining brass bedstead with chintz hangings, its muslin-draped toilette table, and its daintily curtained window, besides a pretty carpet. I can remember now the sort of dazed look with which Euphemia regarded a room such as she had never seen; whilst Lois considered it to be an instalment of her good luck, and proceeded to contemplate her sharp and elfish countenance in her looking-glass, pronouncing it as her opinion that she wanted more colour. That she certainly did, and she might have added, more flesh and youthfulness, while she was about it. However, they were greatly delighted, and Euphemia who was of a grateful and affectionate disposition, actually thanked me, for having with my own hands arranged such pretty rooms for them.

This was a very good beginning. They were both hard-working, civil girls, and got on very well together, leaving me plenty of leisure to attend to the quantities of necessary arrangements which have to be made when you are settling yourself for good, fifty miles from a shop, and on a spot where no other human being has ever lived before. F—— congratulated myself in private on my exceptional good luck, and attributed it partly to my having followed the Upholsterer's advice in that book of Mr. Wilkie Collins. But as it turned out, F—— was dwelling in a fool's paradise. In vain had it been pointed out to me that a certain stalwart north countryman, whose shyness could only be equalled by his appetite, had been a most regular attendant for some weeks past at our Sunday evening services, accepting the offer of tea in the kitchen, afterwards, with great alacrity. I scouted these insinuations, appealing to the general sense of the public as to whether Moffatt had ever been known to refuse a meal anywhere, or under any circumstances, and declaring that, if he was "courting," it was being done in solemn silence, for never a sound filtered through the thin wooden planks between the kitchen and the dining room, except the clatter of a vigorously plied knife and fork, for Moffatt's teas always included a shoulder of mutton.

But I was wrong and others were right. Early in October, our second spring month, I chanced to get up betimes one delicious, calm morning, a morning when it seemed a new and exquisite pleasure to open each window in succession, and fill one's lungs with a deep, deep breath of that heavenly atmosphere, at once so fresh and so pure.

Quiet as the little homestead lay, nestled among the hills, there were too many morning noises stirring among the animals for any one to feel lonely or dull, I should have thought. From a distance came a regular, monotonous, lowing sound. That was "Hetty," the pretty little yellow Alderney, announcing from the swamps that she and her two female friends were quite ready to be milked. Their calves answered them dutifully from the English grass paddock, and between the two I could see Mr. U——'s tall figure stalking down the flat with his cattle dog at his heels, and hear his merry whistle shrilling through the silent air. Then all the ducks and fowls about the place were inquiring, in noisy cackle, how long it would be before breakfast was ready, whilst "Helen's" whinneying made me turn my head to see her, with a mob of horses at her heels, coming over the nearest ridge on the chance of a stray carrot or two going begging. All the chained-up dogs were pulling at the staples of their fastenings, and entreating by short, joyous barks, to be allowed just one good frisk and roll in the sparkling dewy grass around. But even I, universal spoiler of animals that I am, was obliged to harden my heart against their noisy appeals; for quite close to the stable, on the nearest hill-side, an immense mob of sheep and young lambs were feeding. That steep incline had been burnt six weeks before, and was now as green as the clover field at its base, affording a delicious pasturage to these nursing mothers and their frisky infants. I think I see and hear it all now. The moving white patches on the hill-side, the incessant calling and answering, the racing and chasing among the curly little merino lambs, and above all the fair earth the clear vault of an almost cloudless sky bent itself in a deep blue dome. Just over the eastern hills the first long lances of the sun lay in bright shafts of silver sheen on the dew-laden tussocks, and that peculiar morning fragrance rose up from the moist ground, which is as much the reward of the early riser as the early worm is of the bird.

Was it a morning for low spirits or sobs and sighs? Surely not; and yet as I turned the handle of the kitchen door those melancholy sounds struck my ear. I had intended to make my entrance with a propitiatory smile, suitable to such a glorious morning, proceed to pay my damsels a graceful compliment on their somewhat unusual early rising, and wind up with a request for a cup of tea. But all these friendly purposes went out of my head when I beheld Euphemia seated on the rude wooden settle, with its chopped tussock mattrass, which had been covered with a bright cotton damask, and was now called respectfully, "the kitchen sofa." Her arm was round Lois's waist, and she had drawn that young lady's shock head of red curls down on her capacious bosom. Both were crying as if their hearts would break, and startled as I felt to see these floods of tears, it struck me how incongruous their attitude looked against the background of the large window through which all nature looked so smiling and sparkling. The kettle was singing on the fire, everything seemed bright and snug and comfortable indoors. "What in the world has happened?" I gasped, really frightened.

"Nothing, mem: its only them sheep," sobbed Euphemia, "calling like. They always makes me cry. Your tea 'll be ready directly, mem" (this last with a deep sigh.)

"Is it possible you are crying about that?" I inquired. "Yes, mem, yes," said Euphemia, in heart-broken accents, clasping Lois, who was positively howling, closer to her sympathetic heart. "Its terrible to hear 'em. They keeps calling and answering each other, and that makes us think of our home and friends." Now both these women had starved as factory "hands" all their lives, and I used to feel much more inclined to cry when they told me, all unconscious of the pathos, stories of their baby work and hardships. Certainly they had never seen a sheep until they came to New Zealand, and as they had particularly mentioned the silence which used to reign supreme at the manufactory during work hours, I could not trace the connection between a dingy, smoky, factory, and a bright spring morning in this delightful valley. "What nonsense!" I cried, half laughing and half angry. "You can't be in earnest. Why you must both be ill: let me give you each a good dose of medicine." I said this encouragingly, for there was nothing in the world Euphemia liked so much as good substantial physic, and the only thing I ever needed to keep locked up from her was the medicine drawer.

Euphemia seemed touched and grateful, and her face brightened up directly, but Lois looked up with her frightful little face more ugly than usual, as she said, spitefully, "Physic won't make them nasty sheep hold their tongues. I'm sure this isn't the place for me to find my luck, so I'd rather go, if you please, mem. I've prospected-up every one o' them gullies and never seen the colour yet, so it ain't any good my stopping."

This was quite a fresh light thrown upon the purpose of Lois's long lonely rambles. She used to be off and away, over the hills whenever she had finished her daily work, and I encouraged her rambles, thinking the fresh air and exercise must do her a world of good. Never had I guessed that the sordid little puss was turning over every stone in the creek in her search for the shining flakes.

"Why did you think you should find gold here?" I asked.

"Because they do say it lies in all these mountain streams," she answered sullenly; "and I'm always dreaming of nuggets. Not that a girl with my face and figure wants 'dust' to set her off, however. But if its all the same to you, mem, I'd rather leave when Euphemia does."

"Are you going, then?" I inquired, turning reproachfully to my pale-faced cook, who actually coloured a little as she answered, "Well, mem, you see Moffatt says he's got his window frames in now, and he'll glass them the very first chance, and I think it'll be more company for me on Saddler's Flat. So if you'll please to send me down in the dray, I should be obliged."

Here was a pretty upset, and I went about my poultry-feeding with a heavy heart. How was I to get fresh servants, and above all, what was I to do for cooking during the week they were away? These questions fortunately settled themselves in rather an unexpected manner. I heard of a very nice willing girl who was particularly anxious to come up as housemaid, to my part of the world, on condition that I should also engage as cook her sister, who was leaving a place on the opposite side of a range of high hills to the south. I shall only briefly say that all inquiries about these damsels proved satisfactory, and I could see Euphemia and Lois depart, with tolerable equanimity. The former wept, and begged for a box of Cockles' pills; but Lois tossed her elfish head, and gave me to understand that she had never been properly admired or appreciated whilst in my service.



Chapter XII: Culinary troubles.

I want to lodge a formal complaint against all cookery books. They are not the least use in the world, until you know how to cook! and then you can do without them. Somebody ought to write a cookery book which would tell an unhappy beginner whether the water in which she proposes to put her potatoes is to be hot or cold; how long such water is to boil; how she is to know whether the potatoes are done enough; how to dry them after they have boiled, and similar things, which make all the difference in the world.

To speak like Mr. Brooke for a moment. "Rice now: I have dabbled in that a good deal myself, and found it wouldn't do at all."

Of course in time, and after many failures, I did learn to boil a potato which would not disgrace me, and to bake bread, besides in time attaining to puddings and cakes, of which I don't mind confessing I was modestly proud. It used to be a study, I am told, to watch my face when a cake had turned out as it ought. Gratified vanity at the lavish encomiums bestowed on it, and horrified dismay at the rapidity with which a good sized cake disappeared down the throats of the company, warred together in the most artless fashion. The reflection would arise that it was almost a pity it should be eaten up so very fast; yet was it not a fine thing to be able to make such a cake! and oh, would the next be equally good?

One lesson I leaned in my New Zealand kitchen,—and that was not to be too hard on the point of breakages; for no one knows, unless from personal experience, how true was the Irish cook's apology for breaking a dish, when she said that it let go of her hand. I declare that I used, at last, to regard my plates and dishes, cups and saucers, yea, even the pudding basons, not as so much china and delf, but as troublesome imps, possessed with an insane desire to dash themselves madly on the kitchen floor upon the least provocation. Every woman knows what a slippery thing to hold is a baby in its tub. I am in a position to pronounce that wet plates and dishes are far more difficult to keep hold of. They have a way of leaping out of your fingers, which must be felt to be believed. After my first week in my kitchen I used to wonder, not at the breakages, but at anything remaining unbroken.

My maids had a very ingenious method of disposing of the fragments of their pottery misfortunes. At the back of the house an open patch of ground, thickly covered with an under-growth of native grass, and the usual large proportion of sheltering tussocks stretched away to the foot of the nearest hill. This was burned every second year or so, and when the fire had passed away the sight it revealed was certainly very curious. Beneath each tussock had lain concealed a small heap of broken china, which must have been placed there in the dead of the night. The delinquents had evidently been at the pains to perfect their work of destruction by reducing the china articles in question, to the smallest imaginable fragments, for fear of a protruding corner betraying the clever cache; and the contrast afforded to the blackened ground on which they lay, by the gay patches of tiny fragments huddled together, was droll indeed. That was the moment for recognising the remains of a favourite jug or plate, or even a beloved tea-cup. There they were all laid in neat little heaps, and the best of it was that the existing cook always declared loudly her astonishment at the base ingenuity of such conduct, although I could not fail to recognise many a plate or dish which had disappeared from the land of the living during her reign.

All housekeepers will sympathise with my feelings at seeing an amateur scullion, who had distinguished himself greatly in the Balaklava charge, but who appeared to have no idea that boiling water would scald his fingers,—drop the top plate of a pile which he had placed in a tub before him. In spite of my entreaties to be allowed to "wash-up" myself, he gallantly declared that he could do it beautifully, and that the great thing was to have the water very hot. In pursuance of this theory he poured the contents of a kettle of boiling water over his plates, plunged his hand in, and dropped the top plate, with a shriek of dismay, on those beneath it. Out of consideration for that well-meaning emigrant's feelings, I abstain from publishing the list of the killed and wounded, briefly stating that he might almost as well have fired a shot among my poor plates. A perfect fountain of water and chips and bits of china flew up into the air, and I really believe that hardly one plate remained uncracked. So much for one's friends. I must candidly state that although the servants broke a good deal, we destroyed twice as much amongst us during the week which must needs elapse between their departure and, the arrival of the new ones.

Shall I ever forget the guilty pallor which overspread the bronzed and bearded countenance of one of my guests, who particularly wished to dust the drawing-room ornaments, when on hearing a slight crash I came into the room and found him picking up the remains of a china shepherdess? Considering everything, I kept my temper remarkably well, merely observing that he had better go into the verandah and sit down with a book and his pipe, and send Joey in to help me. Joey was a little black monkey from Panama, who had to be provided with broken bits of delf or china in order that he might amuse himself by breaking them ingeniously into smaller fragments.

But the real object of this chapter was to relate some of my own private misfortunes in the cooking line. Once, when Alice S—— was staying with me and we had no servants, she and I undertook to bake a very infantine and unweaned pig. It was all properly arranged for us, and, making up a good fire, we proceeded to cook the little monster.

Hours passed by; all the rest of the dinner got itself properly cooked at the right time, but the pig presented exactly the same appearance at dewy eve as it had done in the early morn. We looked rather crest-fallen at its pale condition when one o'clock struck, but I said cheerfully, "Oh, I daresay it will be ready by supper!" But it was not: not a bit of it. Of course we searched in those delusive cookery books, but they only told us what sauces to serve with a roasted pig, or how to garnish it, entering minutely into a disquisition upon whether a lemon or an orange had better be stuck into its mouth. We wanted to know how to cook it, and why it would not get itself baked. About an hour before supper-time I grew desperate at the anticipation of the "chaff" Alice and I would certainly have to undergo if this detestable animal could not be produced in a sufficiently cooked state by evening. We took it out of the oven and contemplated it with silence and dismay. Fair as ever did that pig appear, and as if it had no present intention of being cooked at all. A sudden idea came into our heads at the same moment, but it was Alice who first whispered, "Let us cut off its head." "Yes," I cried; "I am sure that prevents its roasting or baking, or whatever it is." So we got out the big carving knife and cut off the piggy's head. Far be it from me to offer any solution of the theory why the head should have interfered with the baking process, but all I know is, that, like the old woman in the nursery song, everything began to go right, and we got our supper that night.

Has anybody ever reflected on how difficult it must be to get a chimney swept without ever a sweep or even a brush? Luckily our chimneys were short and wide, and we used a good deal of wood; so in three years the kitchen chimney only needed to be cleansed twice. The first time it was cleared of soot by the simple process of being set on fire, but as a light nor'-wester was blowing, the risk to the wooden roof became very great and could only be met by spreading wet blankets over the shingles. We had a very narrow escape of losing our little wooden house, and it was fortunate it happened just at the men's dinner hour when there was plenty of help close at hand. However great my satisfaction at feeling that at last my chimney had been thoroughly swept, there was evidently too much risk about the performance to admit of its being repeated, so about a year afterwards I asked an "old chum" what I was to do with my chimney. "Sweep it with a furze-bush, to be sure," she replied. I mentioned this primitive receipt at home, and the idea was carried out a day or two later by one man mounting on the roof of the house whilst another remained in the kitchen; the individual on the roof threw down a rope to the one below, who fastened a large furze-bush in the middle, they each held an end of this rope, and so pulled it up and down the chimney until the man below was as black as any veritable sweep, and had to betake himself, clothes and all, to a neighbouring creek. As for the kitchen, its state cannot be better described than in my Irish cook's words, who cried, "Did mortial man ever see sich a ridiklous mess? Arrah, why couldn't ye let it be thin?" But for all that she set bravely to work and got everything clean and nice once more, merely stipulating that the next time we were going to sweep chimney we should let her know beforehand, that she might go somewhere "right away."

I feel, however, that in all these reminiscences I am straying widely from the point which was before my mind when I began this chapter, and that is the delusiveness of a cookery book. No book which I have ever seen tells you, for instance, how to boil rice properly. They all insist that the grains must be white and dry and separate, but they omit to describe the process by which these results can be attained. They tell you what you are to do with your rice after it is boiled, but not how to boil it. The fact is, I suppose, that the people who write such books began so early to be cooks themselves, that they forget there ever was a time when such simple things were unknown to them.

Even when I had, after many failures, mastered the art of boiling rice, and also of making an excellent curry,—for which accomplishment I was indebted to the practical teaching of a neighbour,—there used still to be misfortunes in store for me. One of these caused me such a bitter disappointment that I have never quite forgotten it. This was the manner of it. We were without servants. My readers must not suppose that such was our chronic condition, but when you come to change your servants three or four times a year, and have to "do" for yourself each time during the week which must elapse before the arrival of new ones, there is an ample margin for every possible domestic misadventure. If any doubt me, let them try for themselves.

On this special occasion, which proved to be nearly the last, my mind was easy, for the simple reason that I was now independent of cookery books. I had puzzled out all the elementary parts of the science for myself, and had no misgivings on the subject of potatoes or even peas. So confident was I, and vain, that I volunteered to make a curry for breakfast. Such a savoury curry as it was, and it turned out to be all that the heart of a hungry man could desire; so did the rice: I really felt proud of that rice; each grain kept itself duly apart from its fellow, and was as soft and white and plump as possible. Everything went well, and I had plenty of assistants to carry in the substantial breakfast as fast as it was ready: the coffee, toast, all the other things had gone in; even the curry had been borne off amid many compliments, and now it only remained for me to dish up the rice.

Imagine the scene. The bright pretty kitchen, with its large window through which you could see the green hills around dotted with sheep; the creek chattering along just outside, whilst close to the back door loitered a crowd of fowls and ducks on the chance of fate sending them something extra to eat. Beneath the large window, and just in front of it, stood a large deal table, and it used to be my custom to transfer the contents of the saucepans to the dishes at that convenient place. Well, I emptied the rice into its dish, and gazed fondly at it for a moment: any cook might have been proud of that beautiful heap of snow-white grains. I had boiled a great quantity, more than necessary it seemed, for although the dish was piled up almost as high as it would hold, some rice yet remained in the saucepan.

Oh, that I had been content to leave it there! But no: with a certain spasmodic frugality which has often been my bane, I shook the saucepan vehemently, in order to dislodge some more of its contents into my already full dish. As I did so, my treacherous wrist, strained by the weight of the saucepan, gave way, and with the rapidity of a conjurer's trick I found the great black saucepan seated,—yes, that is the only word for it,—seated in the midst of my heap of rice, which was now covered by fine black powder from its sooty outside. All the rice was utterly and completely spoiled. I don't believe that five clean grains were left in the dish There was nothing for it but to leave it to get cold and then throw it all out for the fowls, who don't mind riz au noir it seems. Although I feel more than half ashamed to confess it, I am by no means sure I did not retire into the store-room and shed a tear over the fate of that rice. Everybody else laughed, but I was dreadfully mortified and vexed.



Chapter XIII: Amateur Servants.

I flattered myself on a certain occasion that I had made some very artful arrangements to provide the family with something to eat during the servants' absence. I had been lamenting the week of experiments in food which would be sure to ensue so soon as the dray should leave, in the hearing of a gallant young ex-dragoon, who had come out to New Zealand to try and see if one could gratify tastes, requiring, say a thousand a year to provide for, on an income of 120 pounds. He was just finding out that it was quite as difficult to manage this in the Southern as in the Northern Hemisphere, but his hearty cheery manner, and enormous stock of hope, kept him up for some time.

"I'll come and cook for you," he cried. "I can cook like a bird. But I can't wash up. No, no: it burns too much. If you can get somebody to wash up, I'll cook. And just look here: it would be very nice if we could have some music after dinner. You've got a piano, haven't you? That's right. Well, now, don't you ask that pretty Miss A——, who has just come out from England, to come and stop with you, and then we could have some music?"

"Where did you learn to cook?" I inquired, suspiciously; for F——had also assured me he could cook, and this had upset my confidence.

"On the west coast; to be sure! Ask Vere, and Williams and Taylor, and everybody, if they ever tasted such pies as I used to make them." My countenance must have still looked rather doubtful, because I well remember sundry verbal testimonials of capability being produced; and as I was still very ignorant of the rudiments of the science of cookery, I shrank from assuming the whole responsibility of the family meals. So the household was arranged in this way:—Captain George, head cook; Mr. U——, scullery-maid; Miss A——, housemaid; myself, lady-superintendent; Mr. Forsyth (a young naval officer), butler. On the principle of giving honour to whom honour is due, this gallant lieutenant deserves special mention for the way he cleaned glass. He did not pay much attention to his silver, but his glass would have passed muster at a club. The only drawback was the immense time he took over each glass, and the way he followed either Miss A—— or me all about the house, holding a tumbler in one hand, and a long, clean glass-cloth in the other, calling upon us to admire the polish of the crystal. To clean two tumblers would be a good day's work for him. From Monday to Saturday (when the dray returned), this state of things went on. Of course I had taken the precaution of having a good supply of bread made beforehand, besides cakes and biscuits, tarts and pies; everything to save trouble. But it was not of much use, for, alleging that they were working so hard, the young men, F—— at their head, though I was always telling him he was married and ought to know better, set to work and ate up everything immediately, as completely as if they had been locusts. And then, they were all so dreadfully wild and unmanageable! Mine was by far the hardest task of all, the keeping them in any sort of order. For instance, Captain George declared one day, that if there was one thing he did better than another, it was to make jam. Consequently a fatigue party was ordered out to gather strawberries, and, after more than half had been eaten on the way to the house, a stewpan was filled. I had to do most of the skimming, as Captain George wanted to practice a duet with Miss A——. I may as well mention here that we never had any opportunity of seeing how the jam kept, because the smell pervaded the whole house to such an extent, that, declaring they felt like schoolboys again, the gentlemen fell on my half dozen pots of preserves in a body, carried them off, and ate them all up then and there, announcing afterwards, there had just been a pot a-piece.

It was really a dreadful time, although we got well cooked plats, for Captain George wasted quite as much as he used. The pigs fed sumptuously that week on his failures, in sauces, minces; puddings, and what not. He had insisted on our making him a paper cap and a linen apron, or rather a dozen linen aprons, for he was perpetually blackening his apron and casting it aside. Then, he used suddenly to cease to take any interest in his occupation, and, seating himself sideways on the kitchen dresser, begin to whistle through a whole opera, or repeat pages of poetry. I tried the experiment of banishing Miss A—— from the kitchen during cooking hours, but a few bars played on the piano were quite enough to distract my cook from his work. My only quiet time was the afternoon, when about four o'clock, my amateur servants all went out for a ride, and left me in peace for a couple of hours. I had enough to do during that short time to tidy up; to collect the scattered books and music, and prepare the tea-supper, for which they came back in tearing spirits, and frantically hungry, between seven and eight o'clock. After this meal had been cleared away, and Mr. U—— and I had washed up (the others declaring they were too tired to stir), we all used to adjourn to the verandah. It happened to be an exceptionally still week, no dry, hot nor'-westers, nor cold, wet sou'-westers, and it was perfectly delicious to sit out in the verandah and rest, after the labours of the day, in our cane easy-chairs. The balmy air was so soft and fresh, and the intense silence all around so profound. Unfortunately there was a full moon. I say "unfortunately," because the flood of pale light suggested to these dreadful young men the feasibility of having what they called a "servant's ball." In vain I declared that the housekeeper was never expected to dance. "Oh, yes!" laughed Captain George. "I've often danced with a housekeeper, and very jolly it was too. Come along! F——, make her dance." And I was forced to gallopade up and down that verandah till I felt half dead with fatigue. The boards had a tremendous spring, and the verandah (built by F——, by the way), was very wide and roomy, so it made an excellent ball-room. As for the trifling difficulty about music, that was supplied by Captain George and Mr. U—— whistling in turn, time being kept by clapping the top and bottom of my silver butter dish together, cymbal-wise. Oh, dear! It takes my breath away now even to think of those evenings! I see Alice A—— flitting about in her white dress and fern-leaf wreath, dancing like the slender sylph she really was, but never can I forget the odd effect of the gentlemen's feet! No one had their dress boots up at the station, and as Alice and I firmly declined to dance with anybody who wore "Cookham" boots (great heavy things with nails in the soles), they had no other course open to them except to wear their smart slippers. There were slippers of purple velvet, embroidered with gold; others of blue kid, delicately traced in crimson lines; foxes heads stared at us in startling perspective from a scarlet ground; or black jim-crow figures disported themselves on orange tent-stitch. Then these slippers were all more or less of an easy fit, and had a way of flying out on the lawn suddenly, startling my dear dog Nettle out of his first sleep.

Ah, well! that may be an absurd bit of one's life to look back upon, but its days were bright and innocent enough. Health was so perfect that the mere sensation of being alive became happiness, and all the noise of the eager, bustling, pushing world, seemed shut away by those steep hills which folded our quiet valley in their green arms. People have often said to me since, "Surely you would not like to have lived there for ever?" Perhaps not. I can only say that three years of that calm, idyllic life, held no weary hour for me, and I am quite sure that quiet time was a great blessing to me in many ways. First of all, in health, for a person must be in a very bad way indeed for New Zealand air not to do them a world of good; next, in teaching me, amid a great deal of fun and laughter, sundry useful accomplishments, not easily learned in our luxurious civilization; and, lastly, those few years of seclusion from the turmoil of life brought leisure to think out one's own thoughts, and to sift them from other peoples' ideas. Under such circumstances, it is hard if "the unregarded river of our life," as Matthew Arnold so finely call it be not perceived, for one then

"—— Becomes aware of his life's flow And bears its winding murmur, and he sees The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze; And there arrives a lull in the hot race, Wherein he doth for ever chase That flying and elusive shadow, rest."

One good effect of my sufferings with a house full of unruly volunteers, was that during the brief stay (only two months), of my next cook, I set to work assiduously to learn as many kitchen mysteries as she could teach me, and so became independent of Captain George or F——, or any other amateur, good, bad, or indifferent.

Nothing could be more extraordinary than the way in which the two affectionate sisters, mentioned [earlier] and who succeeded Euphemia and Lois, quarrelled. They were very unlike each other in appearance, and one fruitful source of bickering arose from their respective styles of beauty. Not only did they wrangle and rave at each other all the day long, during every moment of their spare time, but after they had gone to bed, we could hear them quite plainly calling out to each other from their different rooms. If I begged them to be quiet, there might be silence for a moment, but it would shortly be broken by Maria, calling out, "I say, Dinah, don't you go for to wear green, my girl. I only tell you friendly, but you're a deal too yellow for that. It suits me, 'cause I'm so fresh and rosy, but you never will have my 'plexion, not if you live to be eighty. Good night. I thought I'd just mention it while I remembered." This used to aggravate Dinah dreadfully, and she would retaliate by repeating some complimentary speech of Old Ben's, or Long Tom's, the stockman, and then there would be no peace for an hour.

Their successors were Clarissa and Eunice. Eunice wept sore for a whole month, over her sweeping and cleaning. To this day I have not the dimmest idea why. She gave me warning, amid floods of tears, directly she arrived, though I could not make out any other tangible complaint than that "the dray had jolted as never was;" and to Clarissa, I gave warning the first day I came into the kitchen.

She received me seated on the kitchen table, swinging her legs, which did not nearly touch the floor. She had carefully arranged her position so as to turn her back towards me, and she went on picking her teeth with a hair-pin. I stood aghast at this specimen of colonial manners, which was the more astonishing as I knew the girl had lived in the service of a gentleman's family in the North of England for some time before she sailed.

"Dear me, Clarissa," I cried, "is that the way you behaved at Colonel St. John's?"

Clarissa looked at me very coolly over her shoulder (I must mention she was a very pretty girl, blue-eyed and rosy-cheeked, but with such a temper!) and, giving her plump shoulders a little shrug, said, "No, in course not: they was gentlefolks, they was."

I confess I felt rather nettled at this, and yet it was difficult to be angry with a girl who looked like a grown up and very pretty baby. I restrained my feelings and said, "Well, I should like you to behave here as you did there. Suppose you get off the table and come and look what we can find in the store room."

"I have looked round," she declared: "there 'aint much to be seen." My patience began to run short, and I said very firmly, "You must get off the table directly, Clarissa, and stand and speak properly; or I shall send you down to Christchurch again." I suppose that was exactly what the damsel wished, for she made no movement; whereat I said in great wrath, "Very well, then you shall leave at the end of a month." And so she did, having bullied everybody out of their lives during that time.

Whilst we are on the subject of manners, it may not be out of place to relate a little episode of my early days "up country." I think I have alluded [in "Station Life in New Zealand"] to our book club; but I don't know that it has been explained that I used to change the books on Sunday afternoon, after our little evening service. It would have been impossible to induce the men to come from an immense distance twice a week, and it was therefore necessary that they should be able to get a fresh book after service. Nothing could have been better than the behaviour of my little congregation: they made it a point of giving no trouble whatever with their horses or dogs, and they were so afraid of being supposed to come for what they could get, that I had some difficulty in inducing those who travelled from a distance to have a cup of tea in the kitchen before they mounted, to set off on their long solitary ride homewards. They were also exceedingly quiet and well-behaved; for if even a dozen men or more were standing outside in fine weather, or waiting within the kitchen if it were wet or windy, not a sound could be heard. If they spoke to each other, it was in the lowest whisper, and they would no more have thought of lighting their pipes anywhere near the house than they would of flying.

This innate tact and true gentlemanly feeling which struck me so much in the labouring man as he appears in New Zealand, made the lapse of good manners, to which I am coming, all the more remarkable. Of course they never touched their hats to me: they would make me a bow or take their hats off, but they never touched them. I have often seen a hand raised involuntarily to the soft felt hat, which every one wears there, but the mechanical action would be arrested by the recollection of the first article of the old colonial creed, "Jack is as good as his master." I never minded this in the least, and got so completely out of the habit of expecting any salutations, that it seemed quite odd to me to receive them again on my return. No, what I objected to was, that when I used to go into my kitchen, about ten minutes or so after the service had been concluded, with the list of club books in my hand, not a single man rose from his seat. They seemed to make it a point to sit down somewhere; on a table or window seat if all the chairs were occupied, but at all events not to be found standing. They would bend their heads and blush, and glance shyly at each other for encouragement as I came in, but no one got up, or took his hat off. This went on for a few weeks, until I felt sure that this curious behaviour did not spring from forgetfulness, or inattention. When I mentioned my grievance in the drawing-room to the gentlemen, I only got laughed at for my pains, and I was asked what else I expected? To this question used to be added sundry anecdotes of earlier colonial life, intended to reconcile me to the manners of these later days. I remember particularly a legend of a man cook, who was said to have walked into the sitting-room of the station where the master was practising tunes on an accordion, and exclaimed, "Now, look here, boss, if you don't leave off that there noise, which perwents me gettin' a wink o' sleep, I'll clear out o' this, sharp, to-morrow mornin'. So now yer know," and with that remark he returned to his bunk.