nor for a wooden township, where the worst weapons of man were strong drink in the head and strong language on the tongue; and this was what she found. Great was the disillusion, and in every respect; it discounted and discoloured all things, even to the Bishop's Lodge, which—with its complete margin of creeper-covered verandah—was charming in everything but situation.
"Call this the bush?"
"Call this the bush!—where are the trees?" she said rather petulantly to her father; and, as she looked at his long dust-coat of light-coloured silk, duck trousers, and pith helmet, she might have added: "Call you a Bishop!—where are your gaiters?"
In fact, Miss Methuen's contentment wore away, very nearly, with the novelty. The Bishop saved the situation by taking her with him on his first episcopal round up country. He wore, too, on that round, his gaiters (with a new chum's stout shooting-boots underneath) and black garments, for the cool weather was coming on. They had a delightful cruise among the sheep-stations of the diocese (a little district the size of England), their pilot being the Bishop's Chaplain, who, as it happened, was a son of the soil. They gave the hospitality of the squatter a splendid trial, and found that celebrated Colonial quality rated not at all too high. The Bishop held services in the queerest places, and administered holy rites to the most picturesque ruffians, winning in all quarters the respect and admiration of men not prone to respect or to admire, for his broad shoulders and grizzled beard and his erect six feet, as well as for the humanity and virility of every sentence in his simple, telling addresses. Evelyn, perhaps, was admired less; but she did not suspect this, and she enjoyed herself vastly. There were gentlemanly young overseers at nearly all the stations. These young men, naturally taken with the healthy colour and good looks of the English girl, were sufficiently attentive, and seemed duly impressed by her conversation. So they were; but clever Evelyn was not clever in her topics; she talked Browning to them, and culture, and the "isms"; and they mimicked her afterwards—the attentive young men. But this she did not suspect either. She returned from the cruise in the highest spirits, her preconceptions of the bush not realised, indeed, but forgotten; and after weeks among the stations the wooden town seemed a different and a better place, and the Bishop's Lodge a paradise of ease and beauty.
But during the less eventful period of the Bishop's ministry at head-quarters, the delight on his daughter's part tapered, as her delights invariably did in the absence of variety. She began systematically to miss things "after old England;" and here the Bishop could sympathise, though the forced expression of his sympathy galled his contented and tolerant nature. He pointed out that comparison was scarcely fair, and hinted that it lay with Evelyn, as with himself, at once to enjoy and to improve the new environment. But of course there were matters for regret, occasions for a sigh.
