A path of moonlight lay across the sea. Into it drifted a great ship, her engines almost stopped, so that only a dull, slow throb came up from below, instead of the swift thud-thud of the screw that had pounded for many weeks. It was late; so late that most of the ship's lights were extinguished. But all through her was a feeling of pulsating life, of unrest, of a kind of tense excitement, of long-pent expectation. There were low voices everywhere; feet paced the decks; along the port railings on each deck soldiers were clustered thickly, looking out across the grey, tossing sea to a winking light that flashed and twinkled out of the darkness like a voice that cried “Greeting!” For it was the Point Lonsdale light, at the sea gate of Victoria; and the men of the Nauru were nearly home.

There was little sleep for anyone on board on that last night. Most of the Nauru's great company were to disembark in Melbourne; the last two days had seen a general smartening up, a mighty polishing of leather and brass, a “rounding-up” of scattered possessions. The barber's shop had been besieged by shaggy crowds; and since the barber, being but human, could not cope with more than a small proportion of his would-be customers, amateur clipping parties had been in full swing forward, frequently with terrifying results. Nobody minded. “Git it orf, that's all that matters!” was the motto of the long-haired.

No one knew quite when the Nauru would berth; it was wrapped in mystery, like all movements of troopships. So every one was ready the night before—kit bags packed, gear stowed away, nothing left save absolute necessaries. Then, with the coming of dusk, unrest settled down upon the ship, and the men marched restlessly, up and down, or, gripping pipe stems between their teeth, stared from the railings northwards. And then, like a star at first, the Point Lonsdale light twinkled out of the darkness, and a low murmur ran round the decks—a murmur without words, since it came from men whose only fashion of meeting any emotion is with a joke; and even for a “digger” there is no joke ready on the lips, but only a catch at the heart, at the first glimpse of home.

Norah Linton had tucked herself away behind a boat on the hurricane deck, and there Cecilia Rainham found her just after dusk. The two girls had become sworn friends during the long voyage out, in the close companionship of sharing a cabin—which is a kind of acid test that generally brings out the best—and worst—of travellers. There was something protective in Norah's nature that responded instantly to the lonely position of the girl who was going across the world to a strange country. Both were motherless, but in Norah's case the blank was softened by a father who had striven throughout his children's lives to be father and mother alike to them, while Cecilia had only the bitter memory of the man who had shirked his duty until he had become less than a stranger to her. If any pang smote her heart at the sight of Norah's worshipping love for the tall grey “dad” for whom she was the very centre of existence, Cecilia did not show it. The Lintons had taken them into their little circle at once—more, perhaps, by reason of Cecilia's extraordinary introduction to them than through General Harran's letter—and Bob and his sister were already grateful for their friendship. They were a quiet quartet, devoted to each other in their undemonstrative fashion; Norah was on a kind of boyish footing with Jim, the huge silent brother who was a major, with three medal ribbons to his credit, and with Wally Meadows, his inseparable chum, who had been almost brought up with the brother and sister.

“They were always such bricks to me, even when I was a little scrap of a thing,” she had told Cecilia. “They never said I was 'only a girl,' and kept me out of things. So I grew up more than three parts a boy. It was so much easier for dad to manage three boys, you see!”

“You don't look much like a boy,” Cecilia had said, looking at the tall, slender figure and the mass of curly brown hair. They were getting ready for bed, and Norah was wielding a hair-brush vigorously.

“No, but I really believe I feel like one—at least, I do whenever I am with Jim and Wally,” Norah had answered. “And when we get back to Billabong it will be just as it always was—we'll be three boys together. You know, it's the most ridiculous thing to think of Jim and Wally as grown-ups. Dad and I can't get accustomed to it at all. And as for Jim being a major!—a major sounds so dignified and respectable, and Jim isn't a bit like that!”

“And what about Captain Meadows?”

“Oh—Wally will simply never grow up.” Norah laughed softly. “He's like Peter Pan. Once he nearly managed it—in that bad time when Jim was a prisoner, and we thought he was killed. But Jim got back just in time to save him from anything so awful. One of the lovely parts of getting Jim again was to see the twinkle come back into Wally's eyes. You see, Wally is practically all twinkle!”

“And when you get back to Australia, what will you all do?”

Norah had looked puzzled.

“Why, I don't know that we've ever thought of it,” she said. “We'll just all go to Billabong—we don't seem to think further than that. Anyway, you and Bob are coming too—so we can plan it all out then.”

Looking at her, on this last night of the voyage, Cecilia wondered whether the unknown “Billabong” would indeed be enough, after the long years of war. They had been children when they left; now the boys were seasoned soldiers, with scars and honours, and such memories as only they themselves could know; and Norah and her father had for years conducted what they termed a “Home for Tired People,” where broken and weary men from the front had come to be healed and tended, and sent back refitted in mind and body. This girl, who leaned over the rail and looked at the Point Lonsdale light, had seen suffering and sorrow; the mourning of those who had given up dear ones, the sick despair of young and strong men crippled in the very dawn of life; and had helped them all. Beside her, in experience, Cecilia felt a child. And yet the old bush home, with its simple life and the pleasures that had been everything to her in childhood, seemed everything to her now.

Cecilia went softly to her side, and Norah turned with a start.

“Hallo, Tommy!” she said, slipping her arm through the new-comer's—Cecilia had become “Tommy” to them all in a very short time, and her hated, if elegant, name left as a legacy to England. “I didn't hear you come. Oh, Tommy, it's lovely to see home again!”

“You can't see much,” said Tommy, laughing.

“No, but it's there. I can feel it; and that old winking eye on Point Lonsdale is saying fifty nice things a minute. And I can smell the gum leaves—don't you tell me I can't, Tommy, just because your nose isn't tuned up to gum leaves yet!”

“Does it take long to tune a nose?” asked Tommy, laughing.

“Not a nice nose like yours.” Norah gave a happy little sigh. “Do you see that glow in the sky? That's the lights of Melbourne. I went to school near Melbourne, but I never loved it much; but somehow, it seems different now. It's all just shouting welcomes. And back of beyond that light is Billabong.”

“I want to see Billabong,” said the other girl. “I never had a home that meant anything like that—I want to see yours.”

“And I suppose you'll just think it's an ordinary, untidy old place—not a bit like the trim English places, where the woods look as though they were swept and dusted before breakfast every morning. I suppose it is all ordinary. But it has meant just everything I wanted, all my life, and I can't imagine its meaning anything less now.”

“And what about Homewood—the Home for Tired People?”

“Oh, Homewood certainly is lovely,” Norah said. “I like it better than any place in the world that isn't Billabong—and it was just wonderful to be able to carry it on for the Tired People: dad and I will always be thankful we had the chance. But it never was home: and now it's going to run itself happily without us, as a place for partly-disabled men, with Colonel Hunt and Captain Hardress to manage it. It was just a single chapter in our lives, and now it is closed. But we're—all of us—parts of Billabong.”

Some one came quietly along the deck and to the vacant place on her other side.

“Who's talking Billabong again, old kiddie?” Jim Linton's deep voice was always gentle. Norah gave his shoulder a funny little rub with her head.

“Ah, you're just as bad as I am, so you needn't laugh at me, Jimmy.”

“I wasn't laughing at you,” Jim defended himself. “I expected to find you ever so much worse. I thought you'd sing anthems on the very word Billabong all through the voyage, especially in your bath. Of course I don't know what Tommy has suffered!”

“Tommy doesn't need your sympathy,” said that lady. “However, she wants to look her best for Melbourne, so she's going to bed. Don't hurry, Norah; I know you want to exchange greetings with that light for hours yet!”

She slipped away, and Norah drew closer to Jim. Presently came Wally, on her other side, and a few moments later a deep voice behind them said, “Not in bed yet, Norah?”—and Wally made room for Mr. Linton.

“I couldn't go to bed, dad.”

“Apparently most of the ship is of your mind—I didn't feel like bed myself,” admitted the squatter, letting his hand rest for a moment on his daughter's shoulder. He gave a great sigh of happiness. “Eh, children, it's great to be near home again!”

“My word, isn't it!” said Jim. “Only it's hard to take in. I keep fancying that I'll certainly wake up in a minute and find myself in a trench, just getting ready to go over the top. What do you suppose they're doing at Billabong now, Nor?”

“Asleep,” said Norah promptly. “Oh, I don't know—I don't believe Brownie's asleep.”

“I know she's not,” Wally said. He and the old nurse-housekeeper of Billabong were sworn allies; though no one could ever quite come up to Jim and Norah in Brownie's heart, Wally had been a close third from the day, long years back, that he had first come to the station, a lonely, dark-eyed little Queenslander. “She's made the girls scrub and polish until there's nothing left for them to rub, and she's harried Hogg and Lee Wing until there isn't a leaf looking crooked in all the garden, and she and Murty have planned all about meeting you for the hundred and first time.”

“And she's planning to make pikelets for you!” put in Norah.

“Bless her. I wouldn't wonder. She's planning the very wildest cooking, of course—do you remember what the table used to be the night we came home from school? And now she's gone round all the rooms to make sure she couldn't spend another sixpence on them, and she's sitting by her window trying to see us all on the Nauru. 'Specially you, old Nor.”

“'Tis the gift of second sight you have,” said Jim admiringly. “A few hundred years ago you'd have got yourself ducked as a witch or something.”

“Oh, Wally and Brownie were always twin souls; no wonder each knows what the other is thinking of,” Norah said, laughing. “It all sounds exactly true, at any rate. Boys, what a pity you can't land in uniform—wouldn't they all love to see you!”

“Can't do it,” Jim said. “Too long since we were shot out of the army; any enterprising provost-marshal could make himself obnoxious about it.”

“I know—but I'm sorry,” answered Norah. “Brownie won't be satisfied unless she sees you in all your war paint.”

“We'll put it on some night for dinner,” Jim promised. He peered suddenly into the darkness. “There's a moving light—it's the pilot steamer coming out for us.”

They watched the light pass slowly from the dim region that meant the Heads, until, as the pilot boat swung out through the Rip to where the Nauru lay, her other lights grew clear, and presently her whole outline loomed indistinctly, suddenly close to them. She lay to across a little heaving strip of sea, and presently the pilot was being pulled across to them by a couple of men and was coming nimbly up the Nauru's ladder, hand over hand. He nodded cheerily at his welcome—a fusillade of greetings from every “digger” who could find a place at the railings, and a larger number who could not, but contented themselves with shouting sweet nothings from behind their comrades. A lean youngster near Jim Linton looked down enviously at the retreating boat.

“If I could only slide down into her, an' nick off to the old Alvina over there, I'd be home before breakfast,” he said. “Me people live at Queenscliff—don't it seem a fair cow to have to go past 'em, right up to Melbourne?”

The pilot's head appeared above on the bridge, beside the captain's, and presently the Nauru gathered way, and, slowly turning, forged through the tossing waters of the Rip. Before her the twin lights of the Heads opened out; soon she was gliding between them, and under the silent guns of the Queenscliff forts, and past the twinkling house lights of the little seaside town. There were long coo-ees from the diggers, with shrill, piercing whistles of greeting for Victoria; from ashore came faint answering echoes. But the four people from Billabong stood silently, glad of each other's nearness, but with no words, and in David Linton's heart and Norah's was a great surge of thankfulness that, out of many perils, they were bringing their boys safely home.

The Nauru turned across Port Phillip Bay, and presently they felt the engines cease, and there came the rattle of the chain as the anchor shot into the sea.

“As the captain thought,” said Jim. “He fancied they'd anchor us off Portsea for the night and bring us up to Port Melbourne in the morning, after we'd been inspected. Wouldn't it be the limit if some one developed measles now, and they quarantined us!”

“You deserve quarantining, if ever anyone did,” said Norah, indignantly. “Why do you have such horrible ideas?”

“I don't know—they just seem to waft themselves to me,” said Jim modestly. “Anyhow, the quarantine station is a jolly little place for a holiday, and the sea view is delightful.” He broke off, laughing, and suddenly flung his arm round her shoulders in the dusk of the deck. “I think I'm just about insane at getting home,” he said. “Don't mind me, old kiddie—and you'd better go to bed, or you'll be a ghost in the morning.”

They weighed anchor after breakfast, following a perfunctory medical inspection—so perfunctory that one youth who, having been a medical student, and knowing well that he had a finely-developed feverish cold, with a high temperature, and not wishing to embarrass his fellow-passengers, placed in his mouth the wrong end of the clinical thermometer handed him by the visiting nurse. He sucked this gravely for the prescribed time, reversing it just as she reappeared; and, being marked normal and given a clean bill of health, returned to his berth to shiver and perspire between huge doses of quinine. More than one such hero evaded the searching eye of regulations; until finally the Nauru, free to land her passengers, steamed slowly up the Bay.

One by one the old, familiar landmarks opened out—Mornington, Frankston, Mordialloc, while Melbourne itself lay hidden in a mist cloud ahead. Then, as the sun grew stronger the mist lifted, and domes and spires pierced the dun sky, towering above the jumbled mass of the grey city. They drew closer to Port Melbourne, and lo! St. Kilda and all the foreshore were gay with flags, and all the ships in the harbour were dressed to welcome them; and beyond the pier were long lines of motors, each beflagged, waiting for the fighting men whom the Nauru was bringing home.

“Us!” said a boy. “Why, it's us! Flags an' motors—an' a blessed band playin' on the pier! Wot on earth are they fussin' over us for? Ain't it enough to get home?”

The band of the Nauru was playing Home, Sweet Home, very low and tenderly, and there were lumps in many throats, and many a pipe went out unheeded. Slowly the great ship drew in to the pier, where officers in uniform waited, and messengers of welcome from the Government. Beyond the barriers that held the general public back from the pier was a black mass of people; cheer upon cheer rose, to be wafted back from the transport, where the “diggers” lined every inch of the port side, clinging like monkeys to yards and rigging. Then the Nauru came to rest at last, and the gangways rattled down, and the march off began, to the quick lilt of the band playing “Oh, it's a Lovely War.” The men took up the words, singing as they marched back to Victoria—coming back, as they had gone, with a joke on their lips. So the waiting motors received them, and rolled them off in triumphal procession to Melbourne, between the cheering crowds.

From the top deck the Lintons, with the Rainhams, watched the men go—disembarkation was for the troops first, and not till all had gone could the unattached officers leave the ship. The captain came to them, at last a normal and friendly captain—no more the official master of a troopship, in which capacity, as he ruefully said, he could make no friends, and could scarcely regard his ship as his own, provided he brought her safely from port to port. He cast a disgusted glance along the stained and littered decks.

“This is her last voyage as a trooper, and I'm not sorry,” he said. “After this she'll lie up for three months to be refitted; and then I'll command a ship again and not a barracks. You wouldn't think now, to see her on this voyage, that the time was when I had to know the reason why if there was so much as a stain the size of a sixpence on the deck. Oh yes, it's been all part of the job, and I'm proud of all the old ship has done, and the thousands of men she's carried; and we've had enough narrow squeaks, from mines and submarines, to fill a book. But I'm beginning to hanker mightily to see her clean!”

The Lintons laughed unfeelingly. A little mild grumbling might well be permitted to a man with his record; few merchant captains had done finer service in the war, and the decoration on his breast testified to his cool handling of his ship in the “narrow squeaks” he spoke of lightly.

“Oh yes. I never get any sympathy,” said the captain, laughing himself. “And yet I'll wager Miss Linton was 'house-proud' in that 'Home for Tired People' of hers, and she ought to sympathize with a tidy man. You should have seen my wife's face when she came aboard once at Liverpool, and saw the ship; and she's never had the same respect for me since! There—the last man is off the ship, and the gangways are clear; nothing to keep all you homesick people now.” He said good-bye, and ran up the steps to his cabin under the bridge.

It was a queer home-coming at first, to a vast pier, empty save for a few officials and policemen—for no outsiders were allowed within the barriers. But once clear of customs officials and other formalities they packed themselves into cabs, and in a few moments were outside the railed-off space, turning into a road lined on either side with people—all peering into the long procession of cabs, in the hope of finding their own returning dear ones. It was but a few moments before a posse of uncles, aunts and cousins swooped down upon the Lintons, whose cab prudently turned down a side street to let the wave of welcome expend itself. In the side street, too, were motors belonging to the aunts and uncles; and presently the new arrivals were distributed among them, and were being rushed up to Melbourne, along roads still crowded by the people who had flocked to welcome the “diggers” home. The Rainhams found themselves adopted by this new and cheery band of people—at least half of whose names they never learned; not that this seemed to matter in the least. It was something new to them, and very un-English; but there was no doubt that it made landing in a new country a very different thing from their half-fearful anticipations.

“And you really came out all alone—not knowing anyone!” said an aunt. “Aren't you English people plucky! And I believe that most of you think we're all black fellows—or did until our diggers went home, and proved unexpectedly white!”

“I don't think we're quite so bad as that!” Bob said, laughing. “But certainly we never expected quite so kind a welcome.”

“Oh, we're all immensely interested in people who take the trouble to come across the world to see us,” said Mrs. Geoffrey Linton. “That is, if they don't put on 'side'; we don't take kindly to being patronized. And you have no idea how many new chums do patronize us. Did you know, by the way, that you're new chums now?”

“It has been carefully drilled into us on the ship,” Bob said gravely. “I think we know pretty well all we have to face—the snakes that creep into new chums' boots and sleep under their pillows, the goannas that bite our toes if we aren't watchful, and the mosquitoes that sit on the trees and bark!”

“Also the tarantulas that drop from everywhere, especially into food,” added Tommy, dimpling. “And the bush fires every Sunday morning, and the blacks that rush down—what is it? Oh yes, the Block, casting boomerangs about! There is much spare time on a troopship, Mrs. Linton, and all of it was employed by the subalterns in telling us what we might expect!”

“I can quite imagine it,” Mrs. Geoffrey laughed. “Oh well, Billabong will be a good breaking-in. Norah tells me you are going up there at once?”

“Well, not quite at once,” Bob said. “We think it is only fair to let them get home without encumbrances, and as we have to present other letters of introduction in Melbourne, we'll stay here for a few days, and then follow them.”

“Then you must come out to us,” said Mrs. Geoffrey firmly. “No use to ask my brother-in-law, of course; he has just one idea, and that is to stay at Scott's, get his luggage through the customs, see his bankers as quickly as possible, and then get back to his beloved Billabong. If we get them out to dinner to-night, it's as much as we can hope for. But you two must come to us—we can run you here and there in the car to see the people you want.” She put aside their protests, laughing. “Why, you don't know how much we like capturing bran-new English people—and think what you have done for our boys all these four years! From what they tell us, if anyone wants to go anywhere or do anything he likes in England, all he has to do is to wear a digger's slouched hat!”

They stopped in Collins Street, and in a moment the new-comers, slightly bewildered, found themselves in a tea-room; a new thing in tea-rooms to Tommy and Bob, since it was a vision of russet and gold—brown wood, masses of golden wattle and daffodils, and of bronze gum leaves; and even the waitresses flitted about in russet-brown dresses. David Linton hung back at the doorway.

“It isn't a party, Winifred?”

“My dear David, only a few people who want to welcome you back. Really, you're just as bad as ever!” said his sister-in-law, half vexed. “The children's school friends, too—Jim and Wally's mates. You can't expect us to get you all back, after so long—and with all those honours, too!—and not give people a chance of shaking hands with you.” At which point Norah said, gently, but firmly, “Dad, you mustn't be naughty,” and led him within.

Some one grasped his hand. “Well, Linton, old chap!” And he found himself greeting the head of a big “stock and station” firm. Some one else clapped him on the shoulder, and he turned to meet his banker; behind them towered half a dozen old squatter friends, with fellow clubmen, all trying at once to get hold of his hand. David Linton's constitutional shyness melted in the heartiness of their greeting. Beyond them Norah seemed to be the centre of a mass of girls, one of whom presently detached herself, and came to him. He said in amazement, “Why, it's Jean Yorke—and grown up!” and actually kissed her, to the great delight of Jean, who had been an old mate of Norah's. As for Jim and Wally, they were scarcely to be seen, save for their heads, in a cluster of lads, who were pounding and smiting them wherever space permitted. Altogether, it was a confused and cheerful gathering, and, much to the embarrassment of the russet-brown waitresses, the last thing anybody thought of was tea.

Still, when the buzz of greetings had subsided, and at length “morning tea”—that time-honoured institution of Australia—had a chance to appear, it was of a nature to make the new arrivals gasp. The last four years in England had fairly broken people in to plain living; dainties and luxuries had disappeared so completely from the table that every one had ceased to think about them. Therefore, the Linton party blinked in amazement at the details of what to Melbourne was a very ordinary tea, and, forgetting its manners, broke into open comment.

“Cakes!” said Wally faintly. “Jean, you might catch me if I swoon.”

“What's wrong with the cakes?” said Jean Yorke, bewildered.

“Nothing—except that they are cakes! Jim!”—he caught at his chum's sleeve—“that substance in enormous layers in that enormous slice is called cream. Real cream. When did you see cream last, my son?”

“I'm hanged if I know,” Jim answered, grinning. “About four years ago, I suppose. I'd forgotten it existed. And the cakes look as if they didn't fall to pieces if you touched 'em.”

“What, do the English cakes do that?” asked a pained aunt.

“Rather—when there are any. It's something they take out of the war flour—what is it, Nor?”

“Gluten, I think it's called,” said Norah doubtfully. “It's something that ordinarily makes flour stick together, but they took it all out of the war flour, and put it into munitions. So everything you made with war flour was apt to be dry and crumbly. And when you made cakes with it, and war sugar, which was half full of queer stuff like plaster of paris, and egg substitute, because eggs—when you could get them—were eightpence halfpenny, and butter substitute (and very little of that)—well, they weren't exactly what you would call cakes at all.”

“Butter substitute!” said the aunt faintly. “I could not live without good butter!”

“Bless you, Norah and dad hadn't tasted butter for nearly three years before they came on board the Nauru,” said Jim. “It was affecting to see Nor greeting a pat of butter for the first time!”

“But you had some butter—we read about it.”

“Two ounces per head weekly—but they put all their ration into the 'Tired People's food,'” said Wally.

“It wasn't only dad and I,” said Norah quickly. “Every soul we employed did that—Irish maids, butler, cook-lady and all. And we hadn't to ask one of them to do it. The Tired People always had butter. They used to think we had a special allowance from Government, but we hadn't.”

“Dear me!” said the aunt. “It's too terrible. And meat?”

“Oh, meat was very short,” said Norah, laughing. “Of course we were fairly well off for our Tired People, because they had soldiers' rations; but even so, we almost forgot what a joint looked like. Stews and hot pots and made dishes—you call them that because you make them of anything but meat! We became very clever at camouflaging meat dishes. Somehow the Tired People ate them all. But”—she paused, laughing—“you know I never thought I could feel greedy for meat. And I did—I just longed, quite often, for a chop!”

“And could you not have one?”

“Gracious, no!” Norah looked amazed. “Chops were quite the most extravagant thing of all—too much bone. You see, the meat ration included bone and fat, and I can tell you we were pretty badly worried if we got too much of either.”

“To think of all she knows,” said the aunt, regarding her with a tearful eye. Whereat Norah laughed.

“Oh, I could tell you lots of homely things,” she said. “How we always boiled bones for soup at least four times before we looked on them as used up; and how we worked up sheep's heads into the most wonderful chicken galantines; and—but would you mind if I ate some walnut cake instead? It's making me tremble even to look at it.”

After which Jean Yorke and the russet-brown waitresses vied in plying the new-comers with the most elaborate cakes, until even Jim and Wally begged for mercy.

“You ought to remember we're not used to these things,” Wally protested, waving away a strange erection of cream, icing and wafery pastry. “If I ate that it would go to my head, and I'd have to be removed in an ambulance. And the awful part of it is—I want to eat it. Take it out of my sight, Jean, or I'll yield, and the consequences will be awful.”

“But it is too dreadful to think of all you poor souls have gone through,” said an aunt soulfully. “How little we in Australia know of what war means!”

“But if it comes to that, how little we knew!” Norah exclaimed, “Why, there we were, only a few miles from the fighting—you could hear the guns on a still day, when a big action was going on; and except for the people who came directly in the way of air raids, England knew little or nothing of war: I mean, war as the people of Belgium and Northern France knew it. The worst we had to admit was that we didn't get everything we liked to eat, and that was a joke compared to what we might have had. Hardly anyone in England went cold or hungry through the war, and so I don't think we knew much about it either.” She broke off blushing furiously, to find every one listening to her. “I didn't mean to make a speech.”

“It's quite true, though,” said her father, “even if you did make a speech about it. There were privations in some cases, no doubt—invalids sometimes suffered, or men used to a heavy meat diet, whose wives had not knowledge—or fuel—enough to cook substitutes properly. On the other hand, there was no unemployment, and the poor were better fed than they had ever been, since every one could make good wages at munitions. The death rate among civilians was very much lower than usual. People learned to eat less, and not to waste—and the pre-war waste in England was terrific. And I say—and I think we all say—that anyone who grumbles about 'privations' in England deserves to know what real war means—as the women of Belgium know it.”

He stopped, and Norah regarded him with great pride, since his remarks were usually strictly limited to the fewest possible words.

“Well, it's rather refreshing to hear you talk,” remarked another squatter. “A good many people have come back telling most pathetic tales of all they had to endure. I suppose, though, that some were worse off than you?”

“Oh, certainly,” David Linton said. “We knew one Australian, an officer's wife, who was stranded in a remote corner of South Wales with two servants and two babies; it was just at the time of greatest scarcity before compulsory rationing began, when most of the food coming in was kept in the big towns and the Midlands. That woman could certainly get milk for her youngsters; but for three months the only foods she and her maids were sure of getting were war bread, potatoes, haricot beans and salt herrings. She was a good way from the nearest town, and there was deep snow most of the time. There was no carting out to her place, and by the time she could get into the town most of the food shops would be empty.”

“And if you saw the salt herrings!” said Norah. “They come down from Scotland, packed thousands in a barrel. They're about the length and thickness of a comb, and if you soak them for a day in warm water and then boil them, you can begin to think about them as a possible food. But Mrs. Burton and her maids ate them for three months. She didn't seem to think she had anything to grumble about—in fact, she said she still felt friendly towards potatoes, but she hoped she'd never see a herring or a bean again!”

“She had her own troubles about coal, too,” remarked Jim. “The only coal down there is a horrible brownish stuff that falls into damp slack if you look at it; it's generally used only for furnaces, but people had to draw their coal allowance from the nearest supply, and it was all she could get. The only way to use the beastly stuff was to mix it with wet, salt mud from the river into what the country people call culm—then you cut it into blocks, or make balls of it, and it hardens. She couldn't get a man to do it for her, and she used to mix all her culm herself—and you wouldn't call it woman's work, even in Germany. But she used to tell it as a kind of joke.”

“She used to look on herself as one of the really lucky women,” said David Linton, “because her husband didn't get killed. And I think she was—herrings and culm and all. And we're even luckier, since we've all come back to Australia, and to such a welcome as you've given us.” He stood up, smiling his slow, pleasant smile at them all. “And now I think I've got to go chasing the Customs, if I'm ever to disinter our belongings and get home.”

The girls took possession of Norah and Tommy, who left their menfolk to the drear business of clearing luggage, and thankfully spent the afternoon in the Botanical Gardens, glad to have firm ground under their feet after six weeks of sea. Then they all met at dinner at Mrs. Geoffrey Linton's, where they found her son, Cecil, who greeted Norah with something of embarrassment. There was an old score between Norah and Cecil Linton, although they had not seen each other for years; but its memory died out in Norah's heart as she looked at her cousin's military badge and noted that he dragged one foot slightly. Indeed, there was no room in Norah's heart for anything but happiness.

The aunts and uncles tried hard to persuade David Linton to remain a few days in Melbourne, but he shook his head.

“I've been homesick for five years,” he told them. “And it feels like fifty. I'll come down again, I promise—yes, and bring the children, of course. But just now I can't wait. I've got to get home.”

“That old Billabong!” said Mrs. Geoffrey, half laughing. “Are you going to live and die in the backblocks, David?”

“Why, certainly—at least I hope so,” he said. “I suppose there must be lucid intervals, now that Norah is grown up, or imagines she is—not that she seems to me a bit different from the time when her hair was down. Still I suppose I must bring her to town, and let her make her curtsy at Government House, and do all the correct things—”

Some one slipped a hand through his arm.

“But when we've done them, daddy,” said Norah cheerfully, “there will always be Billabong to go home to!”