Our Boys and Girls.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 978, 28 November 1890, Page 6

Our Boys and Girls.

BECALMED IN A LIFT.

Sam bad always lived on the selection, and he would have been quite contented to stay there until the end of time. No place in the world, that ever he had heard of, seemed to him half as good a home, and no people, he felt certain, were half so nice as his own. There was his father, to begin with, a man who worked from morning till night six days in the week aud spent all the money he earned on other people- -things from the store to eat and to wear, treaole, sugar, flour, stuffs for gowns, hats, and Sunday boots. Sam bad gold buttons ouhis best clothes, too, and when had any one known his father to blossom out into gold buttons ? Never ! A flannel shirt, a pair of moleskin breeohes, and an old felt hat were his share of the family finery. Then what a man he was to make people happy j Just to think of ail the enjoyments he had thought of for Sam alone, even ! There was the fishing tackle he put together as soon as Sam was old enough to hold a rod—the slim bit of peeled ti-tree with a couple of yards of 86wing-twine tied to it by way of a line, with a pickle-bottle cork pierced through the middle for a float, and a sinker made of lead from the tea chest. Thou there was the lure—a kerosene-tin pierced at the sides with nail holes, and fitted up with a blazing fat lamp. That was the way to fetch them ! Two dozen and five bonny bream the very first night ! And there was the goat-cart, and, of course, Yak—he had to be called something different from other goats because the baby’s name was Billy, so as he was a half Angora aud Sam’s mother thought he looked just like the yak that Y stood for in Billy’s Noah’s Ark alphabet-book it was agreed that his name should be Yak, He cost 3s 6d when he waß only a little kid, and he had smashed, uprooted, demolished and devoured many dozens of three-and-six-pence worths before he waß old-enough to go in the shafts. When he was about a year old, though, Sam’s father took him in hand and, telling Yak that he would now have to draw wood from the rough paddock and cabbages and potatoes from the garden, and so earn enough to pay for all the ravages he had committed, he made him a lovely little set of harness, and broke him in to go in the cart without a jib. The cart had been made some time before, and Sam used to be the horse while Billy the baby sat in it and drove. Now the noble Yak had to do the work, and Billy found at the same time that there was plenty for a big boy nearly 3 years old to do also. So he ran alongside the cart while Sam drove, and whenever they spied a god bit of bark or dry wood Billy had it into the cart in no time. Billy was a great company, too, as well as being a useful little man, Best of all, though, Sam thought, was his mother. What would have been the use of fetching home all those nice things from the store if she had not been there with her camp-oven and her big pot and her fryingpan and sewing machine aud all the rest of it, eh ? And her cake tin $ (We must not leave out her cake tin.) And on Sundays what would the selection have been without her? How would Sam and Billy and their father (for he used to listen, too,) ever have heard all about those Bible people if it had not been for her. She knew more about Ishmael, for instance, than anyone else did. How after he had that drink of water he got up and looked about him aud made a little bow and arrow, and when the birds came to the spring took good aim and shot them, and then ran and gathered sticks for a fire whilst Hagar picked the feathers off, and how they roasted them on the hot coals and ate them for supper. The story of Dorcas was another one which Sam’s mother also told far better that it was told when his father first read it the Sunday she was ill. ‘Garments’ he had read. Now Sam cared nothing for "garments.’ But when his mother told him how Dorcas heard of some poor little boys, about the same ages as himself and Billy, whose father lost all his wheat with the rust, so that he had no money, and how she made them nico new dungaree suits with gilt buttons, then Sam loved to hear of her and her doings. YY hen Sam was 8 years old aud Billy was 3, a great event happened—the whole family paid a visit to town for uc less than a fortnight.

They arrived in Brisbane on a Saturday morning, and although they were all rather tired with the journey from the downs they quite felt that there was no time to lose, and that as soon as they had all had a good wash and Si brush up arid down and roundabout they must be up and doing so aB to make the most of their fortnight. The return tickets, you see, would be ‘up ’ at the end of that time, and then a long good-bve to Brisbane. They had lunch at a large shop, and when they bad done they sallied forth into Queen-street, each of them carrying a paper bag filled with something good in case they, might feel hungry again while they were sight-seeing. Late In the afternoon the streets, which for an hour or so had been rather deserted, once more began to fill with people. Companies of soldiers arrived, one after another, from the oatnp, and every, body stood still to watch them as they passed—Sam’s father and mother, Billy, and himself stoping like the others. Just as the Queensland Scottish were marohing by in all their glory, with the bagpipes in full blast, Sam slipped his hand gently Out of bis father’s and—ran away 1 He ,did not know why he ran, nor where he went to. His whole idea for quite three minutes was just to run. I fancy Sam had become so excited with the day’s doingß that he felt he must do something unusual, just for onoe, to work off the joyful craziness whioh possessed him. He stopped again when he had ruu into some half-dozen people, and then he diecovered that he was lost. If such a thing had happened to Billy he would have known what to do. He would have set up a howl whioh would have been heard far and near, ?. n j .™ a^. e ® v erybody only too anxious to und his family for him so that he might grow calm. (To be continued.)