shingle beach on the other, and already the Powers that Be have shadowed forth coming events with a band stand, seats, and bathing-machines. A meat-freezing company has erected works at Timaru which have given a big stimulus to the trade of the place and occasion for the home-boats to call there for cargo, and we recognised a sister to the “Ruapehu” lying there as we went by.
A few miles farther down the line came Oamaru, a very jauntily situated little town, built on a hill, and after this we found that we had quite left the plains behind us and were in hilly Otago. With every mile the views seemed prettier; there were chains of hills, all green in waving corn, with pretty country houses nestling among them, sleek cows in the paddocks, flocks of fat white sheep dotting the fields, and water everywhere, either rivers, streams, or lakelets, with the wide blue sea stretching out beyond it all.
At Seacliff a carriage, with a pair of very fine horses and a coachman in livery, was waiting for the train.
“Oh, how delightfully homey that looks!” exclaimed Mrs Greendays, rubbing the window-pane spattered a little earlier by a sudden shower.
Captain Greendays opened the window, and as he did so a sweet clover’y, cow’y, hay’y, and wholly delicious fragrance floated in.
“Oh!” sighed Mrs Greendays rapturously. “Oh, isn’t that lovely, Mary? This really is a breath of England, and that coachman is surely a materialised ghost!”
“And that,” I said as the plaintive howl from the fog-horn used instead of a whistle on New Zealand railways announced that we were about to start again, “that must be the ghost’s summons or perhaps a reproach to him for coming! What business has he here, unless he can bring with him something more than a fleeting dream-vision of a “stately home” or at least a narrow-streeted, red-brick village with a green and duck-pond.”
“Or some real old oaks and copper beeches and smock-frocked labourers and ancient barns and hoary apple-trees!” continued Mrs Greendays breathlessly. “Oh, Mary, how dare you make me think of it, when you know how home-sick I am?”
“I expect you are hungry!” said her husband sternly. “Come along you two sentimental babies, if we don’t hurry up the dining-car will be crammed!”
