  All the children got the writing craze at “Gillong.” They all wanted to be poets or authors, and there was one continual scribble. Papers and books and slates were covered with little scraps of verses, till Mother declared she could never read another bit of poetry. Sometimes Eileen would come along with fourteen verses of very much the same kind of jingle, and ask them to listen and criticise. “Oh, you said all that before!” Willie would say, in disgust—“away up there in the third verse.” “Yes, but, Willie, don’t you see it’s put in different words, and you have to keep saying the same thing over—only a little bit different to fill up.” “Ugh! you’re a sickening old poet; you’d make a fellow tired.” But Eileen was not daunted. Only lately she had taken to looking very important, and had kept quiet about her work, but, all the same, she scribbled like grim death. “Some day she’ll come in with about a million verses and make a fellow listen to them,” Willie would grumble. Sure enough, one day she came to them with a fat note-book, and asked them to listen to the very best she had ever written—quite a gem, she considered—so they all sat down to hear it: The moon-beams shine through the summer night, All on a garden fair, And the perfume of the flowers arise All on the fresh night air. The moon-beams play with the shining leaves, And the flowers nod and sway, And the stars look down with gentle eyes All night till the dawn of day. There were about eight more verses in this strain, and then it went on: The children play in the garden fair, All through the summer hours, And the birds they sing and the butterflies wing Among the fruits and flowers. “Butterflies wing? What’s that?” asked Willie. “Oh! that means they fly; a poet can say anything, and it’s all right.” Then she went on with about twenty more verses. “Beautiful!” cried Doris, clapping in ecstasy. “Very nice, but too long, I think,” said Mollie. “Oh, I don’t think so!” said Eileen. “I’m going to send it to one of the Sydney papers. It’s as nice a bit of poetry as ever I read in my life.” “Are you goin’ to give it to a paper?” asked Doris. “Give it? No; they’ll have to pay me for it, and pretty well, too, or I won’t part with it.” So the precious MS. was sent away, and Eileen waited with what patience she could for a reply. Then all the others became keener than ever on writing. Doris tried to compose, but she couldn’t make the lines “fit,” and would get in a rage and tear up the paper, and she nearly drove them all crazy asking how to spell words and getting them to help her. “Oh, do leave it off—you’ll never be a poet! You don’t even know what words go with each other,” said Willie one day when she was begging his help. “Oh, come on—help me! It’s all about pwetty bluebells and daisies and my dolly——” “Hang the bluebells and daisies and your old doll!” answered Willie. “You’re real ugly; you’re stopping at my place, and you won’t help me,” said Doris, in a temper. “All right, then; go on.” “I love my little Dolly.” “I do, I do, I do,” chimed in Willie. “No, that won’t do,” called out Doris. “I love my little dolly, I do; I love her so; and she is nice and pwetty——” “As everyone must know,” said Willie. “Oh, yes! beautiful. ‘As everyone must know.’ Write it down, Willie.” And Willie wrote down the first verse. “She plays with the bluebells down along the crick.” “And she’ll tumble in the water if you give her a good kick,” quoth Willie. “Oh, Willie! You’re nasty. You mustn’t say that about Rose.” “All right, then. Go ahead.” “Down along the crick,” repeated Doris, “where the daisies and the bluebells——” “Grow so very thick,” added Willie. “Beauful!” she cried again. “There, that’s two verses,” said Willie; “that’s enough for one day. All good poets never make more than two verses in a day.” “Don’t dey?” said Doris. “No, and you ought to leave it alone now for a week, and you’ll be a real good poet when you start again.” “That’ll be beauful!” she cried again, clapping her hands. Eva used to write a lot about sunsets and moonbeams, and fleecy clouds and brilliant birds. She used to use the dictionary a great deal those days, finding out big words to make her poems sound grand. She always called them poems, and she would copy them out neatly and paint little sprays of flowers round them, and would only occasionally let them be read. Mollie tried poetry for a time, but soon gave it up and dashed into prose, and wrote nice articles and essays. “There’s more sense in yours than all the rest put together,” said Willie. “It’s a lot nicer reading than old poetry.” Meanwhile Eileen waited for a reply about her precious MS. “Not in yet?” she would say, as she scanned the paper every mail day. “Oh, you might have to write a lot before you get it in print!” Mollie would say. “There’s no doubt about mine,” Eileen would answer. One day a big envelope came, and Eileen tore off the wrapper, to find “Not suitable” in big letters across her cherished manuscript. “I’ll never try again,” she cried, almost on the verge of tears. “They’re a mean, horrid old lot, those paper people. I’m sure it is as good as the old stuff they print. It’s just because I’m not known.” They all tried to console her. In fact, Willie went so far as to say he’d call and see those paper chaps when he went back to Sydney, and give them a bit of his mind. Although he did not like Eileen’s poetry, he was very loyal, and sympathised most heartily with Eileen. “I’d like to chop every one of ’em up!” said Doris. And so by degrees Eileen’s keen disappointment wore off. Just a week later there was great shouting and commotion over the page of a Sydney daily, for there was one of Mollie’s articles in cold print, with her name (“Mollie Hudson”) shining at the foot. Oh, the joy and excitement! “How ever did you think of it, Mollie?” and “Oh, it’s beautiful!” came in choruses, for the little article, entitled “The Old Picnic Tree,” breathed of the fresh air of the paddocks and the leafy shade of an old gnarled, knotted tree. “Mollie’s a writer, Mollie’s a writer,” they all shouted, dancing round her; and then they had to have a half-holiday in her honour, and spent the afternoon at the old tree that she had written of; and they had billy tea and nice little hot cakes that Mother had made in honour of the occasion. They spent a wild, happy time, weaving fancies and romances about the time when they should be all famous. “Perhaps we’ll all be real rich and clever when we grow up,” said Eileen. “Wouldn’t it be lovely if the five of us were all writers or artists or musicians, or something of that sort, and had nice big studios and plenty of money, and—and—have a real grand jolly life.” Of course, they all agreed with her, and thought perhaps things might turn out in that fashion; and then Willie said that he “might very likely beat them all—he didn’t speak much about what he was going to be,” he said, “but, all the same, he might surprise them all some day; so they needn’t be too surprised if he, too, became rich and famous.” “Oh, tell us all about it, Willie!” they begged. But he said he hadn’t quite finished thinking things out; but, all the same, they needn’t be too surprised if they heard of him later on being very famous! Then he tried to look very important, although until that moment the thought of being famous had never entered his head. Then the shades grew long in the paddock, and they all scampered off home to the welcome glowing fire of myall. In an office in Sydney a man looked forward eagerly to the arrival of the mail from the North-West, for an eager enthusiast would write in glowing terms of the bushland. Miss Gibson would take her writing tablet to the paddocks, and write quickly page after page:
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