The Fortune-makers or The Cherry-garden

Mollie was rather silent at tea-time. She could not help thinking of those other children in that long-ago far-away garden. Were they real? Or had it all been a dream? It must have been a dream, she thought—such things do not happen in real life—it was impossible that it should have been true. And yet, never before had she dreamt anything so clearly, so "going-on" as she expressed it to herself. She longed to tell Aunt Mary all about it, but the memory of her vow restrained her. If nothing further happened, in course of time she would feel free to tell of her wonderful experience, but in the meantime she must have patience. She racked her brains to think of some roundabout way of introducing the subject of Australia and the year 1878, but could not get past her vow—it seemed to block the way in every direction.

So she ate her little triangles of toast—made in a particularly fascinating way peculiar to Grannie's housekeeping—without enjoying the scrunch, scrunch between her teeth so much as usual. Even the early strawberries and cream found her somewhat absent-minded.

But after tea was cleared away and the room tidied up, Aunt Mary disappeared for a short time and returned with her hands behind her back. She stood before Mollie, and in a solemn voice chanted the following words:

"Neevie neevie nick nack,
Which hand will ye tak?
Tak the right or tak the wrong,
I'll beguile ye if I can."

This was too interesting to be ignored. Mollie sat up and became her ordinary self again. She looked critically at Aunt Mary's arms, shoulders, and eyes, but got no information from any of these. Then she laughed:

"I won't have the wrong, please, I'll have the right."

Aunt Mary laughed too. "You are too clever, Miss Mollie. That is not the way I did neevie-neevie when I was young." She brought her right hand round as she spoke, and in it was a charming box, large, varnished, and clamped at the corners with brass. She laid it on Mollie's lap, and watched the sliding lid being pulled out by a pair of impatient hands. It was a beautiful jig-saw puzzle.

"Oh, where did you get it?" Mollie cried joyfully. "I adore jig-saw puzzles. You are a lovely, lovely aunt!" and she held out her arms for a hug and a kiss.

"Well," said Aunt Mary, smiling with pleasure at the success of her surprise, "I remembered how fond you are of jig-saws, so yesterday, as soon as you had fallen asleep, I wired to Hamley's. I was not sure if it would arrive to-day, so I did not tell you. Now, let us see what it is—a map! Oh, dear me, I hope you won't find a map dull!"

Grannie, who loved jig-saws almost as much as Mollie did, had drawn up a substantial table to the sofa and seated herself beside it. "Dull!" she said reprovingly, "I hope not indeed. Maps are the most interesting puzzles one can have. What is it a map of?"

"We'll soon find that out," said Mollie, laying a very jagged section upon the table and studying it with interest. "What funny names—Weeah! Where's that? It sounds like China."

Grannie had also possessed herself of a section, and was scrutinizing it through her spectacles. "I'll need my reading-glass, Mary, my dear," she said; "my old eyes cannot see this tiny print."

A silver-handled reading-glass was brought, and Grannie considered her section again: "The Yarra," she read out, "I wonder if you can tell me where the Yarra is, Mollie?"

"Never heard of it," said Mollie, shaking her head. "Yankalilla. Where's that? Goomooroo, Wanrearah, Koolywurtie. What names! I am glad I am not a railway guard in this place, wherever it may be."

"Aha, Miss Mollie, I am cleverer than you are with all your Oxford and Cambridge examinations!" Grannie exclaimed triumphantly, "for I can tell you where the Yarra is—it is the river upon which Melbourne is built, and Melbourne is the capital of Victoria, and Victoria is a colony in Australia."

"Australia!" Mollie exclaimed, a little startled. "How funny—I mean how interesting!" It was certainly rather odd, she thought, that her difficulty should be solved so promptly, for now, of course, she might ask as many questions as she pleased and no one would wonder at her sudden interest in our distant colonies. In the meantime Grannie and Aunt Mary were both too much engrossed in the puzzle to notice the rather peculiar expression on Mollie's face, and soon she too became absorbed in the puzzle under her eyes, and forgot for the moment the stranger puzzle in her mind.

When Mollie's breakfast-tray came up next morning, the first thing she saw on it was a letter from Dick. She seized it and tore it open.

"DEAR MOLL,

"I've had the rummest experience you ever. Young Outram says it was -pyh- -psy- -pysh—-ghosts, you know. He says I must tell you exactly what happened and not leave out anything, because quite small things might turn out to be most important. Young Outram is great on ghosts and Spirits, he says it is because he was born in the East. It happened like this. Y.O. and me were sitting together at our desk, which is at the back beside the window. It is a very good desk. Old Nosey was talking about Macbeth—or perhaps it was Paradise Lost, I am not sure of this point, because sometimes he does one and sometimes the other, according to the mood he is in. But it was one of them. Y.O. and I were making a list of Probable Players in next term's 1st XV, and we both said 'Jenkyns will have left', at the same time, so we hooked little fingers and said Kipling, and were wishing a wish when all of a sudden, without the slightest warning there appeared, sitting on our desk, the most absolutely top-hole parrot I ever saw in my life. We sat staring, because, you see, we never saw the beast fly in, and if it flew through the window we must have seen it, because of my arm being on the window-sill. While we were still staring I distinctly heard your voice say, 'Do come here, Dick.' Just those words and then no more. Then the parrot vanished absolutely, tail and everything, though it was the finest parrot's tail I ever saw in my life. I can tell you, Moll, it made me sit up hearing you like that. Y.O. said my freckles came out like a rash because I got almost pale under them. I wish I'd seen myself. Then we made the astonishing discovery that none of the other chaps had seen the parrot, in fact they say it is a cock-and-bull story, but we are sitting tight because of the phyc-thingummy. Young O. says that whatever it is he has to be in it too, because most probably it was owing to his peculiar Indian ghostiness that we saw it at all. I don't quite agree, but anyhow that's what he says, and he'd better be in. Please write by return of post if you can explain this phenomenon. We hope you aren't dead.

"Yours affec.,

"DICK."

Mollie read this letter through twice, then laid it down and ate her egg and toast without thinking much of what she was doing. She felt rather startled again; things were certainly queerish. Either her vivid dream had penetrated to Dick's brain—and such experiences were not altogether unknown between the twins—or else—or else Prudence really had come yesterday, and there was something in that story of the Time-travellers. So the experiment had worked too. She remembered the brilliant parrot.

She could not make up her mind how much of her story she might tell to Dick. Her vow had only applied to grown-ups, and since the Campbells had helped her to wish Dick over, presumably they would allow her to take him into her confidence. But would he believe such an unlikely story—and what about Young Outram? They had not bargained for two boys. She decided to wait and see if Prudence came again, and, in the meantime, to write and tell Dick that she was alive and well, and that some explanation of his most extraordinary vision would certainly be forthcoming sooner or later.

The morning passed much more quickly than the previous morning had done. Mollie and Grannie worked hard at the jig-saw puzzle, and, without breaking her word by the smallest fraction, Mollie contrived to get a considerable amount of information about Australia from Grannie. Not, of course, that she was totally ignorant on the subject of our Australian colonies, but her knowledge was vague, and her interest before this time had been so faint that it was hardly worth mentioning. Grannie, on the other hand, had had a brother and many friends in Australia, and had, at one time or another, corresponded with a number of people there. She was able to tell Mollie several thrilling tales of bush fires, of the gold-fields, and of Ned Kelly, the great bushranger. But in none of her stories did the name of the Campbells appear.

After lunch Mollie was again tucked up on her sofa and told to take a little nap. Grannie was somewhat amused to be asked for the photograph-album again. "Bairns have queer fancies," she thought to herself, as she laid it on Mollie's lap. "Don't look too long, my lamb," she said aloud. "Try and go to sleep. You were all the better yesterday. There is Aunt Mary playing the piano—dear me, it is long since I heard that tune!"

When Mollie was left alone she opened the album, lay back on her cushions, and stared hard at the picture of prim little Prudence.

"Now we shall see! Was it a dream, or will she come again? That is the question."

But nothing happened. Prudence stared solemnly and stolidly back, looking almost too good for human nature's daily food.

"But she wasn't, I feel sure she wasn't, even if it was all a dream. Oh—how disappointing! I did hope that parrot of Dick's meant something, and I do so want to see those children again and know what happened next. Besides, it would be thrilling to be a Time-traveller—one could see all sorts of things."

As she meditated over her disappointment Mollie turned the pages of the album, looking rather listlessly at the other children, and deciding that none was so attractive as Prudence, till she came to a group of three girls and a boy. She looked closer, then stretched out her hand for the reading-glass and looked again: "I do believe it is—yes, it is—Hugh and Prudence and Grizzel and Baby! How I wish they would come alive!"

Even as she said the last word she saw a smile dawn upon Prue's face. She did not drop the album this time but held tightly on to it, closed her eyes, and counted twenty. When she opened them there stood Prue, looking as good and sweet as ever.

"Oh, I am glad to see you!" Mollie exclaimed, sitting up and holding out her hands. "I thought it was all a dream, and that you were not coming. You will take me with you again, won't you? I did love yesterday."

Prudence smiled and took Mollie's hands in her own. "We need not waste time talking to-day," she said. "Listen to the music."

Mollie shut her eyes and listened to Aunt Mary, who just then began to sing—Mollie could hear the words quite plainly:

"Oft in the stilly night,
Ere slumber's chain hath bound me,
Fond memory brings the light
Of other days around me."

They were standing on a rough deeply rutted cart-track high up on a hill-side. Behind them the hill rose steeply, so thickly wooded that Mollie could not see plainly to the top. Before her it fell in a gentle slope to a narrow valley, through which ran a shallow creek with green banks on either side. Straight before her, half-way up the opposite hill, she saw a white cottage covered with a scarlet flowering creeper. It had casement windows all wide open, and a trellised porch. The garden of the cottage reached to the foot of the hill, and for three-quarters of its length was filled with rows of vines, looking like green lines ruled on a brown slate.

On one side of the little vineyard Mollie could see a path winding up the hill, twisting in and out between vines and overhanging trees till it lost itself in a flower-garden, which made such a splash of rosy pink and flaming scarlet that Mollie thought it might have been spilt out of a sunset.

By the roadside at her feet sat Grizzel, red curls still bobbing round her head, and apparently the very same blue overall still clothing her slim little body. She was moulding a lump of wet clay, shaping it into a bowl, pinching here, smoothing there, patting and pressing with both little grubby hands. On a strip of grass before her stood a long row of golden balls, glittering in the sunshine as if they had newly left a jeweller's shop.

Prudence stood beside Mollie, rolling a clay ball round and round in her hands; and Mollie discovered presently that she herself was also rolling a lump of sticky stiff mud into some sort of shape, she was not sure what, but it seemed very important that it should be exactly right.

As she watched the other two children, she saw Grizzel rise to her feet and run a few steps along the road to where, on the upper slope, a wedge had been sliced out of the hill, leaving a three-cornered open space which glittered curiously. This apparently was where the golden balls came from, for Grizzel stooped down, and lifting a handful of shining sand let it filter evenly through her fingers over her bowl. She then set the bowl on the ground, and lightly rubbed the gold sand into its surface. She repeated this process three times, then straightened herself, rubbed her gritty hands on her overall, shook the curls out of her eyes, and said:

"It's quite a nice bowl. If only we could make them hold water, Prue, it would do beautifully for Mamma's Russian violets."

As Grizzel spoke Mollie suddenly realized that she knew where she was. They were in "the hills", across the way was their summer cottage, and those blue-green trees were gum trees. She remembered the long road she had seen from the Look-out, and how she had longed to follow it and see what lay behind those hills.

She carried her ball along to the wedge in the hill-side and rolled it in the golden sand, rubbing it and sprinkling it as she had seen Grizzel do, and soon it took on a splendid yellow shine.

"It looks very nice, Mollie," said Grizzel. "I like the way you've shaped it like an orange. I wonder if I could make a bunch of cherries—I think I will try to-morrow. Put it here beside mine; it is the hottest place."

Mollie stopped and put her ball—which she now saw she had shaped like an orange—beside Grizzel's on the sunny patch of grass. Then she stood up and looked round her again.

"Where is Hugh?" she asked, "and Baby, and your father and mother?"

"I think that is Hugh prowling among the roses over the way," Prudence answered, shading her eyes with one hand, and looking across the valley at the garden. "What is he doing, I wonder—he seems to have lost something! Baby is with Bridget. Papa and Mamma haven't come up yet. Miss Hilton is supposed to be taking care of us, but she is rather a goose."

"All the better for us," said Grizzel. "If she were strict and fussy we wouldn't have nearly such a nice time as we do. You have only to say snake to Miss Hilton and she is ready to faint; it is useful sometimes."

"Why should you say snake?" asked Mollie, feeling rather relieved to hear that the elders of the family were away.

"Because there are snakes about, and she is terrified of them,"
Prudence explained.

"Oh dear—so am I, horribly frightened!" Mollie exclaimed. "I never saw a snake in my life except in the Zoo." "Then how do you know you are frightened of them?" Grizzel asked. "You only have to be a little firm with them and they won't do you any harm. I have lived in Australia for years and years and have never once been bitten."

"I hope I will never meet one when I am alone," Mollie said, shaking an unconvinced head.

While the other children counted their balls, dried their hands, and tied on their sunbonnets, Mollie stood still and gazed about her. The country she saw looked strange and unfamiliar to her eyes. So far as she could see there seemed to be few trees but gum trees, with their monotonous foliage and gaunt grey trunks, so different from the mossy trunks at home in English woods. Here and there one had fallen, and lay like a giant skeleton on the ground. On all sides were hills, not very high, but rolling one behind the other like waves, some wooded and some bare of trees and covered only with short grass and rough boulders. Over everything was the same beautiful clear sunlight that had impressed Mollie so much on her first visit, and the air was warm and soft. She thought of the dull street at home in North Kensington, with brick houses all crowded up together and dingy little back-yards, and she wished that her family could come and live in this wide and sunny country.

As she stood, a cry came across the valley.

"Coo-eee! Cooo-eeeee!"

"There's Bridget calling for tea," said Prudence. "Come on quick; I'm as hungry as a hunter, and Biddy said she would make some damper, because we are rather short of bread."

"What is damper?" asked Mollie, as she followed the other two down the hill. "Is it wet bread?"

"Don't you know what damper is?" Grizzel asked, with round eyes. "It is unleavened bread—you know, like the Children of Israel ate. Sometimes we find manna too, lying underneath the trees, but I don't like it much. I am glad I am not a Child of Israel," she added; "I don't like that old Moses. Do you?"

"I haven't thought about him very much," Mollie confessed; "I suppose he was all right in his own way."

"He was so fond of Thou shalt not," Grizzel objected, "and I can't bear thou shalt nots. If I had made the commandments I should have said 'Thou oughtest not to commit murder, but if thou doest thou shalt be hung'. Don't you think that would be more interesting?"

"No, I don't," Mollie answered decidedly, "I like things to be short and plain like Thou shalt not steal. Then you know where you are."

Prudence looked disapprovingly at her sister. "You should not talk like that, Grizzel; it is flippant, and you know what Papa says about flippancy."

Grizzel made a face but did not answer, and they went on in silence till they reached the foot of the hill. They crossed the little creek by stepping-stones, and walked slowly up the winding path, the vines with their ripening grapes on the one side, and on the other great cherry trees, laden with the largest and reddest cherries that Mollie had ever seen in her life. They hung down temptingly among the green leaves, dangling their little bunches in the most inviting way imaginable, some scarlet, some black, and some almost white, but all ripe and luscious. The children stretched up their hands and pulled some, which tasted as good as they looked.

"I'm going to make cherry jam to-morrow," Grizzel said, dropping her stones on the ground and carefully pushing them into the soil with the heel of her boot. "I'm going to make the first beginnings of my fortune."

"What fortune?" asked Mollie, throwing her stones away in the careless fashion of people who are accustomed to buying their fruit in shops.

"My jam fortune," Grizzel answered. "Every year Mamma sends a case of jam home to Grandmamma, and this year I am going to put in twelve tins of my very own jam, and Grandmamma will sell it and put the money in the bank for me. She promised she would if I was a good girl, and I've been as good as it is possible for a human being to be."

"But can you make really-truly jam?" Mollie asked incredulously—Grizzel looked so small and young to be a maker of real jam in shoppy tins.

"Grizzel is a beautiful cook," said Prudence, with an air of great pride. "You wait till you taste her herring-shape, and her parsnip sauce. Mamma says that cooks are born, not made, and that Grizzel is born and I'm not made."

Mollie felt an immense respect for Grizzel. Cooking was not her own strong point, as her Guide captain had informed her in plain language more than once, and in any case food at home was too precious for children to experiment with except under supervision—there could be no playing about with fruit and sugar for instance. She began to think that if there were some things she could teach these forty-years-ago children, there were also some things she could learn from them—a thought which would have given her mother much pleasure could she have seen into her daughter's mind at that moment.

"Hullo, girls!" said Hugh, coming out of the garden as they drew near the cottage, "I've got an idea."

[Illustration: GRIZZEL THREW IN A SMALL HANDFUL OF TEA]

Mollie turned to look at Hugh. He had grown a little taller, she thought, but was as clear-eyed and meditative as ever. And behind Hugh was the flower-garden, full of roses—thousands and thousands of roses, mostly pale pink. They were loose-petalled and exquisitely sweet. The children paused for a moment before going into the house, and all four sniffed up the delicate fragrance appreciatively.

"That's my idea," said Hugh, with an extra loud sniff. "Scent! Let's make attar of roses. It costs a guinea a drop to buy, and we could make bottles full. I've been examining the rose-bushes—they are simply packed full of buds behind the flowers. I have been reading about it. It's quite easy to do; you merely have to extract the essential oil from the petals and there you are. I'll show you after tea."

They passed through the porch into the house. There was no hall; they walked straight into the sitting-room, where a table was spread with tea, and Miss Hilton, a rather faded-looking lady of middling age, was already seated behind the tea-pot.

"Go and wash your hands, children," she said, in a voice that matched her looks, "and smooth your hair. I am surprised at you coming into the room like this. I don't know what your visitor will think, I am sure. Children have very different manners in England."

Mollie glanced round at the other three. She herself stood behind Miss Hilton and was therefore not within that lady's line of vision. She winked largely with her left eye, and a smile of relief travelled round the room.

Tea was a silent meal in spite of the festive damper, which was so good that Mollie thought it must have alleviated the unfortunate lot of the Children of Israel considerably. Hugh was thinking out his plan for making attar of roses; Prue was day-dreaming about nothing in particular, as she was too fond of doing; Grizzel's mind was wandering away to golden bowls, golden cherries, and other possible and some quite impossible golden achievements; while Mollie listened to Baby, who carried on a long and intimate conversation with a family of bread-and-butter—otherwise the beddy-buts—which had found a temporary home upon her plate. Miss Hilton poured out tea absent-mindedly, and seldom spoke except to rebuke someone for putting elbows on the table.

As soon as the meal was over the children went into the garden again, and, once outside, their tongues began to move.

"I shall nab Baby's bronchitis-kettle," Hugh announced, "and make a distiller, and we can begin to-morrow. You girls will have to help me, for I must watch the distilling all the time, and someone must keep me supplied with fresh rose-petals."

"I can't do much, because I'm going to make jam," said Grizzel, "and I want Prue and Mollie to help me to gather cherries. I've got one or two new ideas"—Mollie thought the family seemed great on ideas—"but, if you'll solder up my jam tins, I'll help with your attar."

"I'll tell you what," said Prue, "we'll have a secret breakfast."

"What's a secret breakfast?" asked Mollie.

"You'll see in a minute," Prue answered. "It's a lovely thing. Then we'll get up and pull the cherries and cut them open, and we can pick the roses afterwards, when they are warm and dry."

"Then we had better get the things ready now," said Grizzel.

So while Hugh went off to a little old hut, which served them for a playroom, to build up his distillery, the three girls set out to inspect the cherry trees, and engaged in the pleasing task of tasting a few cherries off each tree to decide which had the finest flavour.

"I think they are all absolutely topping," said Mollie. "I don't know how you can tell which is best."

"What funny words you use," said Grizzel. "Topping!"

"Well—top-hole then, or ripping, or great, or first-class, or jolly good."

Both hearers laughed. "You had better not let Miss Hilton hear you," said Prue, "or she will tell Mamma, and then you will have to write out 'topping' a hundred times."

Grizzel led the way to the flower-garden, which was laid out on the terrace immediately below the cottage. A sanded path ran along by the rose-bed, which was banked up for two feet or so to keep the soil from washing down in the rainy season. Prudence and Grizzel stopped at a corner where, in a sheltered angle, lay a low pile of bricks built up four-square with a hollow centre.

"This is our fire-place," Prue explained to Mollie. "When we get up very early we make a fire here and boil tea and have a secret breakfast, because proper breakfast isn't till nine o'clock when Miss Hilton is mistress, and we get so hungry—besides, it is a lark."

"Write out 'lark' one hundred times, my dear Prudence," said Grizzel, in a voice so exactly like Miss Hilton's that Mollie looked round with a start, and the other two laughed.

They gathered sticks, which they carried into the kitchen to be dried, Bridget being a good-natured conspirator, and they collected sugar, tea, and damper for their feast. Darkness falls early in Australia, and the children decided to go to bed in good time, so that they should waken fresh in the morning. Mollie thought that their bedroom was a delightful place, quite different from a London bedroom. It had a door to itself, with a flight of wooden steps leading down to the garden, so that the children could slip out without disturbing the household. Mollie thought this very romantic.

"You won't think it very romantic if some old bushranger gets in through the night and shoots you dead," Grizzel cheerfully suggested.

"Be quiet, Grizzel," Prudence said reprovingly. "What is the use of frightening Mollie like that? You never saw a bushranger in your life."

But a London girl, who has been through a dozen air-raids without losing any nerve, is not likely to disturb herself over a possible but improbable bushranger, and indeed Mollie was blissfully ignorant on the subject in spite of Grannie's tales; so she went to bed quite peacefully in the little camp-bed, and lay for a time watching the brilliant stars shine through the wide-open window. The lovely night scents floated in with the soft breeze, and Mollie could hear strange birds calling to their mates at an hour when most English birds are in bed and fast asleep.

The first rosy streaks of dawn saw the three girls making their morning toilet at the pump, where the water was cold even to the touch of English Mollie, but it was freshening, and they emerged from their splashes with pink cheeks and ravenous appetites. The "inventor" loved his bed and did not join in the morning revels. (So boys were lazy lie-a-beds in Father's young days, thought Mollie.)

Prudence and Mollie went straight to the cherry trees with their baskets, while Grizzel lighted the fire and prepared the secret breakfast. She called them before the first baskets were quite full. The fire was burning cheerfully, sending long streamers of wood smoke into the morning air. On the bricks sat a billy-can full of water just on the boil, and, as it bubbled up, Grizzel threw in a small handful of tea, giving it a stir round with a cherry twig. She let it bubble again while she counted ten, then lifted the can to one side and put the lid on. She had begged a cup of warm, frothy milk from the milk-boy's pail as he came up the hill. The damper was sitting on the hot bricks, and Grizzel had gathered a plateful of strawberries from the berry-bed at the foot of the hill.

They sat down on the sandy path, holding their mugs of steaming tea in one hand and their damper in the other, large juicy strawberries taking the place of jam. Mollie thought it was the most exquisitely delightful breakfast she had ever tasted in her life. The sun had risen and was sending his beautiful rays along the valley; they fell upon the roses and heliotrope in the garden and on the misty blue-green of the gum trees on the hill opposite. As the children munched in silent enjoyment, their eyes wandering here and there, one long shaft of light fell straight upon the patch of golden sand, so that it glittered as though it were the door to Aladdin's cave. Prue reached out her hand and pulled down a branch of sweet-scented geranium, crushing a leaf and holding it to Mollie's nose.

"Isn't it nice here, Mollie?" she said.

"It's perfectly heavenly," Mollie answered, with a sigh. "Why can't all the world be as nice as this, and why do people ever live in streets?"

They tidied up the remains of their breakfast, and were soon back at work in the cherry trees. By nine o'clock they had filled four baskets and had stoned more than half, and laid them in a shallow pan with sugar over them "to draw", as Grizzel explained. They cracked the kernels and took out the tiny white nuts, and last of all Grizzel added a good handful of gooseberries.

"That's my idea," she said, "it will help the cherries to jell. I think
I will pop in some red currants too."

"You are clever," Mollie said admiringly. "I never in all my life saw a girl as young as you make jam."

"When I am grown up," Grizzel said, sucking her sugary fingers as she spoke, "I am going to have a fruit-farm and make immense quantities of jam to send home. Grandmamma says our jam is the nicest she has tasted, especially our peach and apricot. I am going to try grape jam too, and I shall preserve mandarin oranges whole, and pineapples, and figs."

Mollie suddenly remembered big tins of jam which used to arrive from Australia now and then, at a time when jam was very scarce and precious in London. She smiled to herself as she wondered if they had been Grizzel's jams—they might have been. At any rate they must have come from beautiful gardens like this.

"If you do," she said to Grizzel, "put a picture of yourself and a cherry tree on the tin. It will look much prettier than 'Campbell's Jams'!"

This made the children laugh, and they went in to their second breakfast feeling very cheerful and what Mollie called "pleased with life". The lazy inventor made his appearance halfway through the meal, looking still rather sleepy. "Come and see my distillery," he said, when breakfast was over, "I fixed it up last night."

Hugh had set the bronchitis-kettle—always carried about with Baby, who was subject to croup—on the fire-place, and had fixed a long narrow jam-tin on to the end of the spout.

"I put the roses and water into the kettle," he explained, "and they boil, and the steam comes out and drops into this cold tin and condenses. Then, when we have enough, we boil that up and condense again. Then we skim the oil that rises to the top, and that is attar of roses. It is perfectly simple."

"It sounds simple," said Mollie, "but—"

"But what?" asked Hugh, with a frown.

"Oh, I don't know—just but," said Mollie, in a hurry. "I don't know a thing about distilling; how many boilings will it take to collect a bottle of attar?"

"A good many, but you must not forget that a bottle holds a great many drops, and each drop is worth a guinea, so that a lavender-water bottle will hold about three hundred guineas' worth."

Mollie was greatly impressed. How easy it was to make fortunes in Australia! And how much pleasanter a way than Father's way, which meant living in a street and sighing over bills, and not making much of a fortune after all.

The girls returned to the garden, and soon gathered enough petals for the first boiling. Hugh, in the meantime, lit the fire and fetched water from the rain-water tank. "It says water from a spring, in the book," he said, "but there's nothing like rain-water really for this kind of work."

Soon Grizzel said she must go to her jam-making. Prudence stayed to help Hugh, and Mollie decided to hover between both fortune-building schemes, as she was too deeply interested in the results to wish to miss either. For an hour they worked hard, Mollie and Prudence bringing in fresh supplies of roses, rain-water, and logs of wood, for the fire had to be kept well stocked. The room got very hot, for Hugh would not allow any windows to be opened, and a good part of the steam managed to escape in spite of all his care. Indeed it seemed to Mollie that more steam got into the room than into the tin. After the third instalment of roses and water she asked if she could be spared to go and see how the jam was getting on.

"You might bring back some bread and skimmings," said Prudence.
"Working like this makes you so hungry."

The day was warm, but it was refreshing to get out of doors after the steamy atmosphere of the playroom. Mollie sauntered along, keeping in the shade of the trees, a little tired after her early rising. She could see Bridget and Baby at the bottom of the garden gathering gooseberries for a pudding. Baby's pink sun-bonnet bobbed about like a rose going for a walk in the berry-bed. Before she reached the kitchen door she began to smell something uncommonly like burning sugar.

"I expect it has spilt on the stove," she thought; "that pot is pretty heavy for Grizzel to lift."

The smell got stronger and stronger, and when Mollie reached the kitchen there was not only a smell but smoke. There was no sign of Grizzel, nor of anyone else; the house was silent and empty but for the sizzling and smoking of the boiled-over jam. Mollie ran to the stove—a funny flat arrangement, different from the stoves of her acquaintance. The jam had evidently been boiling over for some time, for not only the saucepan, the stove, and the fender, but even the floor was covered with a dark-brown sticky syrup. She trod carefully to the fire-place and lifted the pan to one side, the smoke and steam making her eyes water.

"Making fortunes is pretty hot work in Australia," she muttered to herself. "If I made many there wouldn't be much of me left to enjoy them with. Where on earth is Grizzel?"

She found her in their bedroom, arranging some vine leaves and green grapes in her golden bowl, quite oblivious of a world which contained jam.

"I think your jam is burning, Grizzel—I am afraid it is rather badly burnt."

"My jam!" said Grizzel, coming back to the world of every day. "Goodness me! I forgot all about the jam." She hastily dumped her bowl down on the window-sill, and flew to the kitchen, followed by Mollie.

"Oh dear, dear, dear!" she cried, when her eyes fell upon the scene of devastation. "Oh, my jam! my jam! Oh, why am I both a cook and an artist? One half of me is always getting into the way of the other half! Oh, Mollie—my lovely, beautiful jam!"

"Let's taste it and see; perhaps it isn't burnt," Mollie suggested. But one sip was enough. "Ab-so-lute wash-out!" was her verdict. Grizzel seized the pot by the handle and made for the door.

"What are you going to do?" asked Mollie, following her.

"Bury it," said Grizzel, laying down the pot and seizing a spade. She rapidly dug a shallow hole, poured the sticky black mixture into it and tossed back the earth.

"And they were so pretty a few hours ago," she wailed. "Why on earth did I go and spoil them like that! Oh, Mollie, I am a cruel girl!"

"It isn't really any more cruel than eating them," said Mollie consolingly. "I'd just as soon be burnt as eaten myself—only perhaps one might be cooked first and eaten afterwards. I must say it is rather hard lines on mutton when you come to think of it."

Grizzel took the blackened pot to the pump, filled it with water, and carried it back to the kitchen. The fire was nearly out, and logs had to be piled on and blown up with the bellows before the pot could be set on again. Grizzel looked round for a towel to clear up the horrible mess with, but Bridget had washed her towels that morning and they were all hanging out to dry on the line.

"Get a newspaper and crumple it up," suggested Mollie; "wet it in the pot-water."

When Bridget and Baby appeared at the door, two very hot and sticky children were surrounded by a litter of crumpled, wet, black newspapers, and the stove was as far as you can possibly imagine from being clean.

"Holy saints!" said Bridget.

Nothing could have looked less like holy saints than Mollie and Grizzel did at that moment. They stood up in the midst of the ruins, and Mollie waited for the skies to fall. But Biddy was a good-natured soul.

"An' me stove new cleaned this very mornin'—you an' yir jam! Be off wid ye!" flapping the children out of the way with her apron as she spoke.

"Come and wash," said Grizzel, catching up a tin basin from the porch as they went out.

When they were moderately clean again they went back to the playroom to see how the scent-makers were faring. They found Hugh and Prudence as red as lobsters; the big kettle had been moved and a tiny one put in its place.

"I thought I'd better try how the experiment was getting on," Hugh explained to Mollie and Grizzel. "There's no use doing all the roses till we see if it's all right; so I'm boiling up the distilled water now."

He peered into a doll's milk-jug, which was fastened on to the end of the little spout. "There is a little. We'll just try for oil," he said, lifting the jug off and carrying it to the window. There was about half a teaspoonful of water in the bottom.

"It looks oily; I guess there will be one drop." He sniffed anxiously as he spoke. "And it does smell of roses too, by jiminy!"

They all sniffed in turn, and agreed that there really was an undeniable smell of roses. "And it might have only smelt of wet tin," Hugh said. "Look here, Prue, don't empty that little kettle. We'll boil it up again and collect another drop. Put some more logs on the fire."

Prudence looked at Hugh with a slightly exasperated expression; she was very hot and rather tired: "Hugh Campbell, you know as well as I do that there is nothing but tinny water left in that kettle. If you think anyone is going to pay a guinea a drop for scent called Wet Tin you are a goose. I wouldn't buy it if it was the only scent in the world."

Hugh was not discouraged. "My idea is right," he said. "I shall make a larger distiller and try again. There's plenty more roses. Next time we are by the sea I shall look for ambergris. It is found floating on the shores of warm countries, and all scent should have ambergris in it, properly speaking."

"I shall try again too," said Grizzel. "There's plenty more cherries, and a new barrel of sugar came yesterday. After all, everybody has ups and downs when they are making fortunes. I'll take good care never to burn my jam again."

"I'm not really sure if attar of roses is worth while," Hugh said thoughtfully, his eyes on the tiny milk-jug in his hand; "only rich people could afford to buy it. If you want to make a fortune it is better to make something that everyone wants, rich and poor. Soap might do."

"Jam," said Grizzel.

"I'm not sure if it is right to make fortunes at all," said Mollie slowly.

"Why not?" asked the other three all at once.

"Because it doesn't seem fair, somehow. Some people are so frightfully rich, and some people haven't even enough to eat. My mother goes to the children's hospital every week, and sometimes she takes me. You can't think what some of the poor babies are like—and then you go outside and see rich, rich women in splendid motor-cars—I mean carriages," she corrected herself, "and it does make you feel things aren't fair, and I do like fairness."

The Australian children were silent for a minute or two.

"But if no one was rich no one could give," Grizzel said at last. "We know very rich people here, and they do lovely kind things. Mrs. Basil Hill sends us a packing-case of exquisite oranges every summer, and when she comes to see Mamma she almost always brings us a surprise packet—last time it was five pounds of the most beautiful sweets in Rundle Street, and the time before it was all Miss Alcott's books."

"But if everybody was the same, people wouldn't have to give you things," said Mollie. "You'd have them yourself."

"Then we would never get a surprise," said Grizzel, "and that would be horribly dull. Don't you think it would be dull if everybody was exactly the same?"

"I suppose it would," Mollie admitted, with a sigh, feeling that she had not presented her case attractively; "but I think they might be samer than they are."

"There's no use talking," Hugh said decisively. "Australia is full of fortunes waiting to be made. I heard Papa say so. And the early bird gets the worm, and the better the bird the better it is for everyone all round."

"Except the worm," said Grizzel.

They all laughed. "I wish I had a brother instead of three sisters,"
Hugh remarked, emptying the contents of the tiny milk-jug over a
handkerchief which had once been clean. "A brother would be some use.
Where's yours?" he asked Mollie. "Did he get our message?"

This reminded Mollie of Dick's letter, which impressed the Australians as much as it had impressed Mollie.

"So the next thing—the next thing——" she repeated, looking round at the other three children. "What is the next thing to do?"

"We can't tell you," Prudence said, with a funny little smile, "you'll have to fix it yourself in the end."

"Cooo-eeeee!" sounded from the cottage.

* * * * *

"Cherry jam for tea to-day, fresh from the preserving-pan," Aunt Mary was saying. "That will be a treat for you, Mollie, my dear."