Ruby: A Story of the Australian Bush

CHRISTMAS DAY in the Australian bush! Not the sort of Christmas Day we dwellers in bonnie Scotland or merry England are accustomed to. The sun is blazing down in remorseless strength upon the parched ground, where the few trees about the station cast so slight a shadow. Past the foot of the straggling garden the little creek dances and ripples on its way to the river, half a mile away, and, as far as eye can reach, stretch the blue distances of bush in long, monotonous undulation. “Wish he’d come,” says Ruby. “The pudding will be quite cold.” On such a day as this it does not seem of paramount importance whether the pudding be hot or cold. In fact, Christmas Day though it be, it would be rather a relief to have a cold pudding than otherwise. Ruby’s anxious little face testifies that such is not her opinion. She has come out to the verandah, and, shading her eyes with her hand from the white glare of the sun, gazes now this way, now that. The pudding lies heavily upon her heart. “Ruby!” comes a rather querulous voice from the room beyond the shady blue blinds. The little girl gives one last long glance in every direction, then lets the shading hand drop, and passes through the open doorway of the pretty cottage which is Ruby’s home. “Isn’t he coming, Ruby?” The yellow-haired woman lying on the sofa is Ruby’s step-mother. The roses of the once pretty pink cheeks have paled to white, and there are fretful little lines about the corners of the mouth, and a discontented expression in the big blue eyes; but with it all Mrs. Thorne has pretensions to beauty still. “He’s not in sight yet, mamma,” returns Ruby, wrinkling up her brow. She calls Mrs. Thorne “mamma,” for the fair-faced unaffectionate woman is the only mother the child has ever known. Ruby was only a baby when her own mother died, and “mamma in heaven” is a far less real personage to her little daughter than “mamma” on earth. “It’s very tiresome.” The lady’s tone is peevish, and she fans herself languidly with a large fan lying by her side. “I can’t conceive what makes your father so irregular at mealtimes. Do bring me something cool to drink, Ruby, like a good child. This heat is intolerable.” The “station” is built in a quadrangle, and across one corner of this quadrangle Ruby has to go ere she reaches the kitchen. If it is hot in the living room, it is ten times hotter here, where Jenny, a stout, buxom Scotchwoman of forty or thereabouts, who for love of her mistress has braved the loneliness of bush life, is busy amidst her pots and pans getting ready the Christmas dinner.