Broad Arrow by Caroline Leakey — Read

SEE all that is to be seen at the earliest opportunity, was Bridget's practical maxim. She had no notion of waiting till ten o'clock, if her curiosity might be satisfied at eight or six. She had seen an evening in the antipodes; she now longed to see a morning. As yet no tokens of semi-barbarism had come under her notice; but might not the darkness have covered them? What might not the light of day reveal? She had marked the sun go down with his wonted glory, no peculiarity distinguishing his setting, save, perhaps, a deeper curtain of radiance drawn upon his exit. But then the sun--who expects peculiarities of him? Is he not the world's own sun, and not exclusively Australia's? She retired to rest, determining to be up at daybreak, in order to see how morning realities bore out evening impressions, and how evening impressions bore on morning realities.

The wonder of being in a new world, the doubt that she had ever existed in another, crossed and recrossed each other in her mind; and when she tried to decide between them, a long line of moonlight shone into the room and seemed to glide in between the wonder and the doubt, playing fitfully on one, and then upon the other, making decision still more difficult; then suddenly retreating it left a question upon her soul, 'Is it all a dream?' and as the question came unallowed yet irresistibly into her thoughts, a silvery acacia waved its feathery branch, and cast a faint nodding shadow, which seemed in dumb show to answer, 'Yes, a dream! a dream! dreamlike as this--vanishing--vanish' and ere the word could finish, Bridget started up--her spirit full of wonders and doubts, moonbeams and shadows--to ascertain what was dream and what reality. The long line of light was not a dream, though withdrawn from her room, for there it lay upon the lawn; and the shadow? It was as much a reality as any shadow could be; for yonder upgrew the feathery acacia still sending it forth in the wake of the fickle beam. Her mental perplexity, nothing satisfied by the discovery set itself to solve a host of other problems. What had wonders, doubts, moonbeams, shadows, and dreams in common, that they should all mingle in her thoughts? but problem brought on problem, until, hopeless of fathoming the least, she exclaimed, 'It is so horrid not to know what anything means.' But the cry brought no good fairy with magic touch to arrange the tangled meshes into a fabric wherewith to clothe her ideas in a presentable form. A moment more and one of Bridget's own laughs aroused herself to consciousness of being neither dream nor shadow, but a fair, well-proportioned substance lying snug and warm in a more comfortable bed than she had known for four months, whilst the self-same moon she had loved at home, and the bright cross that she had learnt to love since it had first looked down on her from southern skies, hung calm and beautiful just overhead, where she could gaze on them without raising herself from her pillow. She then bethought her of her laugh, and feared it had gone in to Emmeline; she well knew what a tell-tale it would be. So she determined to follow it on tip-toe to see what mischief it had done; noiselessly opening her cousin's door, she peeped in, and saw Emmeline sitting up with an anxious expression of countenance, as if listening to some uncommon sound.