'Mid camp-fires gleaming, 'mid shot and shell,Supper was a very gay mealthe gayest there had ever been at Odiam. Rose laughed and talked, as at Starvecrow, and soon her husband and the boys were laughing with her. Some of the things she said were rather daring, and Caro had only a dim idea of what she meant, but Rose's eyes rolling mischievously under the long lashes, and the tip of her tongue showing between her lips, gave her words a devilish bite even if only half understood. Somehow the whole atmosphere of the Odiam kitchen was changedit was like the lifting of a curtain, the glimpsing of a life where all was gay, where love and ambition and all solemn things were the stuff of laughter."I'm tiredlet's sit down and rest a bit."
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"I've won," he said softly to himself, while behind him the blazing gorse spat and crackled and sent flames up almost to the clouds with triumphant roars"I've wonand it's bin worth while. I've wanted a thing, and I've got it, surelyeand I ?un't too old to enjoy it, nuther. I may live to be a hunderd, a man of my might. But if I go next week, I shan't complain, fur I've lived to see my heart's desire. I've fought and I've suffered, and I've gone hard and gone rough and gone emptybut I haven't gone in vain. It's all bin worth it. Odiam's great and Boarzell's mineand when I die ... well, I've lived so close to the earth all my days that I reckon I shan't be afraid to lie in it at last."It was about a fortnight after this court day that the fortunate yeoman one morning led his mother, Edith Holgrave, to the cottage he had built on the land that was now his own."I don't ask you to disremember anything. Only let me have supper and a bed, and to-morrow"Bessie was now thirty, and looked older, for she had lost a front tooth and her pretty hair had faded: but she was as confident of Robert's love as ever. He had[Pg 334] written to her by every mail, she told Caro, and they had both saved and scraped and waited and counted the days till they could consummate the love born in those fields eternally fixed in twilight by their memory. There had been no intercourse between Odiam and Eggs Hole, so, as Robert had never written to his family, Caro heard for the first time of the sheep-farm in Queensland and its success. He had done badly at first, Bessie said, what with the drought and many other things against him, but now he was well established, and she would be far better off and more comfortable as the felon's wife than she had ever been as the daughter of honest parents.
