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love, she reflected. So much nicer to be out in the open all day long, with the sun, and the wind, and the blue sky, than to be shut up indoors. Well, perhaps some day she could have a little farm of her own. What would it cost, she wondered? Nearly £400—the balance of the money her mother had left her—was safely lodged in the savings bank in Wairiri. But that wouldn’t go far in buying a farm, she feared. She was to get another £200 when she was twenty-five, and if she saved… No! It didn’t sound practicable. Still, most dreams weren’t easily realized.

“You’ll be growing into a regular farmer soon,” said a voice beside her.

Rodney Marsh, begrimed and dusty—his soiled shirt open at the neck, his sleeves rolled up above his elbows, and his old felt hat on the back of his head—stood beside her.

“Just what I was thinking I’d like to be,” she answered, flourishing her willow branch, and shouting “Shoo!” at one of the last hesitating sheep.

Marsh laughed.

“Wonderful fine farmer you’d make!” he jeered.

“A better one than you think, perhaps,” she answered briskly.

“What do you know about sheep?”

“Nothing—at present. But I could learn. I’ve learnt not to fall off when I canter, at any rate.”

“That’s a great lot to know, isn’t it?”

“I don’t mind being laughed at. What are all those things in the wool of the sheep?”

The laughter died out of Marsh’s face.

“Bathurst burr,” he answered shortly.

“What the children call ‘biddy-biddy’?”

“Yes.”