“The Medlicots’ troubles will never trouble me, Harry,” she said.

“I hope not, Kate; nor mine either more than we can help.”

“But they do,” said Mary.  “They trouble me, and her too, very much.”

“A man’s back should be broad enough to bear all that for himself,” said Harry.  “I get ashamed of myself when I grumble, and yet one seems to be surly if one doesn’t say what one’s thinking.”

“I hope you’ll always tell me what you’re thinking, dear.”

“Well, I suppose I shall—­till this fellow is old enough to be talked to, and to be made to bear the burden of his father’s care.”

“By that time, Harry, you will have got rich, and we shall all be in England, sha’n’t we?”

“I don’t know about being rich, but we shall have been free-selected off Gangoil.—­Now, Mrs. Growler, we’ve done dinner, and I’ll have a pipe before I make another start.  Is Jacko in the kitchen?  Send him through to me on to the veranda.”

Gangoil was decidedly in the bush—­according to common Australian parlance, all sheep stations are in the bush, even though there should not be a tree or shrub within sight.  They who live away from the towns live a “bush life.”  Small towns, as they grow up, are called bush towns, as we talk of country towns.  The “bush,” indeed, is the country generally.  But the Heathcotes lived absolutely and actually in the bush.  There are Australian pastures which consist of plains on which not a tree is to be seen for miles; but others are forests, so far extending that their limits are almost unknown.  Gangoil was surrounded by forest, in some places so close as to be impervious to men and almost to animals in which the undergrowth was thick and tortuous and almost platted, through which no path could be made without an axe, but of which the greater portions were open, without any under-wood, between which the sheep could wander at their will, and men could ride, with a sparse surface of coarse grass, which after rain would be luxuriant, but in hot weather would be scorched down to the ground.  At such times—­and those times were by far the more common—­a stranger would wonder where the sheep would find their feed.  Immediately round the house, or station, as it was called, about one hundred acres had been cleared, or nearly cleared, with a few trees left here and there for ornament or shade.  Further afield, but still round the home quarters, the trees had been destroyed, the run of the sap having been stopped by “ringing” the bark; but they still stood like troops of skeletons, and would stand, very ugly to look at, till they fell, in the course of nature, by reason of their own rottenness.  There was a man always at work about the place—­Boscobel he was called—­whose sole business was to destroy the timber after this fashion, so that the air might get through to the grasses, and that the soil might be relieved from the burden of nurturing the forest trees.