Page:The Toll of the Bush.pdf/148

At last the sun was going down. Never before in Robert’s experience had there been a day of such duration. More usually the daylight was inadequate to the duties of a settler whose heart was in the performance of his work. But to-day the sun had displayed an unheard-of reluctance to complete his portion of the universal contract.

The last of the kumaras had been duly set out in the row. There had been time to do some more or less necessary weeding in the vegetable garden, to earth up the melons afresh, even to strew rushes on the strawberry patch, and to nip off the sly runners whose ambition it is to establish themselves before they are discovered; but still the sun delayed high up, as though he also would commemorate this day of days. But the instinct of the lover turns with longing eyes to the night, and when love’s promises point also in the same direction, then the day becomes a stumbling-block and time itself a rack.

But the sun was going at last. In a languorous glory of reluctant adieus he dipped the horizon and