Morrisby had handed him down an envelope before he went, and Millicent, still standing by the gate as he came out, could see between his fingers a strip of white and green paper, and on his face a smile of honest satisfaction. It was the cheque for his month’s milk that he had received, and his cows had clearly done well.
And now the road ran level for awhile between a double line of blue-gums. Is there anywhere, for catching the light, anything better than a blue-gum tree? Smooth and bare, its slender silver pillar springs shining up, its delicate twigs respond to every least play of the wind, its long, polished leaves arrest every sunbeam and turn it to a flame of bright white light. Millicent walked the length of this glittering avenue, inhaling with delight its pungent and wholesome aroma, and came out beyond it upon the brink of a sharp declivity, down which the road went winding. This, she realised, must be the limit of her walk; so she sat down for a moment upon a blackened log, carefully choosing a part of it that was not festooned with the delicate but designing tracery of tentacled “lawyer,” and took a good, heart-satisfying look at the country spread beyond.
Burnt Bush, to those that have ever lived in it, has a beauty all its own—a curious beauty, lying in the very lap of ugliness. These great stretches of denuded tawny and russet-colour give room for the spirit to expand. They are spacious, sea-like, still. Here and there, too, amid the solitude and the ruinous remains, a little grey iron roof, amid a handful of new trees from over the water, tells of Man—the successor of the forest he has destroyed.
