THE BUSH-BOY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 29, 4 February 1933, Page 16 (Supplement)

THE BUSH-BOY.

(By Josephine Gilroy, 20, Inverness Avenue, Dpsom, age 13.) In the coolest, most delightful valley in the whole of the bush-land 1 met him. He was sitting on a log over a rocky creek, his bare brown legs dangling in the water. He was whistling, now merrily, now sad, then changing, he began to sing the songs of our birds. First a tui, then a bush pigeon answered him. I felt a little afraid, and was backing away quietly when I slipped. Looking up he saw me, and to my surprise, smiling sweetly, he walked gracefully towards me and helped me up. He was dressed in a simple feather mat, his arms and legs were bare; he wore a girdle at his waist; his hair was dark, yet his eyes were blue; his face tanned as were his arms and legs. I thanked him. He smiled again as he left me. I called to him to come back, to sing again, but he only shook his head, and in a voice that was as the sweetest music, answered, "No, I must be going. I am late already; fny people will be wondering where I am. Some other day, perhaps." When I roached home I told my aunt of my encounter, and she said, "Listen, Mary, I will tell you a story. You know that old house at the edge of the bush?" "Oh, Lorrimer's place?" asked I. "Yes, Mr. Lorrimer was a poet. He came here for the benefit of his health; with him was his three-year-old son, a beautiful dark boy. They lived alone. Early, the boy came to love the bush; he and his father spent hours wandering through it, studying our rrative birds. The honeysuckle and other things growing aro nid his house were planted by him to attract our sweetest songster. The boy,. Michael, was nine when his father died. His guardians journeyed here to bring liim back to the city, but they never found him, for oil the day of their arrival, lie disappeared. Some say the wood elves captured him, while others say that ho lives with the natives, but most®believe that ho is dead." But I know that lie lives in tile forest and that his people are the wild things of our forest, thd birds and the plants, the fishes and the mountains. He lives among them as their favoured child, and is loved by them as lie and his father loved them.