Then bells clanged and a whistle shrieked, porters flew wildly about,
and farewells were said, sadly or gaily as the case might be.
There was a woman crying: in a hopeless little way on the platform,
and a girl with sorrowful, loving eyes leaning out of a second-class
window towards her; there was a brown-faced squatter, in a tweed cap
and slippers, to whom the three-hundred-mile journey was little more
of an event than dining; and there was the young man going selecting,
and thinking England was little farther, seeing his wife and child
were waving a year's good-bye from the platform. There were sportsmen
going two hundred miles after quail and wallaby; and cars full of
ladies returning to the wilds after their yearly or half-yearly tilt
with society and fashion in Sydney; and there were the eight we are
interested in, clustering around the door and two windows, smiling
and waving cheerful good-byes to the Captain.
He did not look at all cast down as the train steamed fussily away---
indeed, he walked down the platform with almost a jaunty air as if
the prospect of two months bachelordom was not without its redeeming
points.
It was half-past six in the afternoon when they started, and they
would reach Curlewis, which was the nearest railway station to
Yarrahappini, about five the next morning.
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