Across the valley there came now and again, softened by distance,
the song of the river; and up in the river-bend, on a spur of the
hills, were white walls rising from clustered greenery.
"How beautiful!" said the girl, half standing up in the waggonette,
"and is that--"
"That's Kuryong, Miss Grant. Your home station."
CHAPTER VIII.
AT THE HOMESTEAD.
Miss Grant's arrival at Kuryong homestead caused great excitement
among the inhabitants. Mrs. Gordon received her in a motherly way,
trying hard not to feel that a new mistress had come into the house;
she was anxious to see whether the girl exhibited any signs of her
father's fiery temper and imperious disposition. The two servant-girls
at the homestead--great herculean, good-natured bush-girls, daughters
of a boundary-rider, whose highest ideal of style and refinement
was Kuryong drawing-room--breathed hard and stared round-eyed, like
wild fillies, at the unconscious intruder. The station-hands--Joe,
the wood-and-water boy, old Alfred the groom, Bill the horse-team
driver, and Harry Warden the married man, who helped with sheep,
mended fences, and did station-work in general--all watched for a
sight of her. They exchanged opinions about her over their smoke
at night by the huge open fireplace in the men's hut, where they
sat in a semicircle, toasting their shins at the blaze till their
trousers smoked again, each man with a pipe of black tobacco going
full swing from tea till bedtime.
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