Milford Sound trip till we could do it decently in the “Waikare.” What are we to say to the Admiral if Mary gets knocked up?”
“There is not the remotest chance of that!” I exclaimed. “Do you know what I have been thinking, Mrs Greendays? That New Zealand weather is like the lady in the old song,
“Oh the sadness of her sadness when she’s sad!
Oh the badness of her badness when she’s bad!
But the sadness of her sadness
And the badness of her badness
Are nothing to her gladness when she’s glad!”
“It is certainly the most womanly of countries!” assented Captain Greendays with a laugh. “Very beautiful, very varied in its charm, and very changeable in mood, eh Hilda?”
“Excellent qualities,” retorted Mrs Greendays, “when you understand that you may expect them. But my chief grievance is that we were not warned about the changeability of the weather! To come out expecting to find a land of constant sunshine where invalids will be as well able as hardy sportsmen to travel in perfect comfort, and then meet with such weather and such conditions as we had on the Wanganui, in Westland, and again here, is enough to send one home utterly disgusted with the place. But if the idiotic guide-book had only been more candid and not shown only one side of the picture, so that one would come prepared for all sorts and conditions one would think nothing of it!”
“Quite right!” Colonel Deane joined in. “Clothes, said the Cynic of Chelsea, are nothing, the man’s the thing. But had he been a woman minus a mackintosh in the rain on the Wanganui, or without furs when coaching in Westland, or wearing patent leather American shoes in crossing McKinnon’s Pass, I think that he would have expressed different opinions. But now we ought to be getting on, for these swags are pretty damp too, I’m afraid, and the things will have to be dried before you can change.”
We jumped up quickly and when we got outside the hut, behold, in the interval the sun had appeared! The valley with its towering sentinels was a fine sight though the topmost peaks were still hidden in clouds. It looked like an immense arena in which a mighty battle with stone missiles had taken place, and which, deserted now and grey with the dust of deadly strife, awaited in loneliness the coming of one who would clear away the remnants of the avalanches, straighten the twisted streams, and restore order where chaos now reigned supreme.
We looked, walked on, looked again,—turned a corner, and were in a new world! We had left the grey battlefield for a peaceful green hamlet through which ran a highway, a torrent hurrying over a boulder-bed with splash and dash, as the couriers might who hurried to tell the tale of the fight. The “hamlet” was beautiful,—forest trees with their climbing vines, tree-fern and their million minor relations, clumps of fragrant, exquisite, starry-blossomed
