: From Billabong to London by Bruce Mary Grant Leist Fred Illustrator - Australia Juvenile fiction; World War 1914-1918 Juvenile fiction; Adventure stories Australian; Country life Australia Juvenile fiction; Families Juvenile fiction; Ocean travel Juvenile

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still in many ways the small boy your mother left me."

"Well, except for this I don't want to be any different," Jim answered. "You've never made me feel it, except in being jolly good to me--look how you've treated me as a sort of equal in managing the place, ever since I left school. I've never said anything, but I've noticed it every day."

"Well, you have common sense--and you don't do wild things with your authority," his father answered. "You've made it possible for yourself. And you know, Jim, I didn't actually forbid you to enlist. I don't give you orders."

There was silence for a moment. Jim rammed tobacco into his pipe furiously, and then laid it aside again with a gesture of impatience.

"There are things a fellow can't talk about," he said. "I'm an awful fool at talking, anyhow. But one can't open a paper without reading about Belgium and the things the Germans have done there; and it makes one feel one has simply got to go. Fighting men is all very well, and in the way of business. But--women and kids!"

"I know," said David Linton.

From the drawing-room came the cheerful sound of a piano, and Norah's fresh young voice in a verse of a song, with Wally joining in. The father gripped the arms of his chair and stared in front of him; seeing, perhaps, blackened Northern cornfields, and children who fled, crying, before an army.

No one spoke for a long time. The silence in the room was only broken by the tick of the clock and the sputter and crackle of the wood fire. From his post on the hearthrug Jim watched his father, trying vaguely to read his answer in the grave face. But David Linton, staring into the fire, gave no sign. His thoughts were wandering back over the long years since his wife's death had fallen upon him suddenly, tearing the fabric of his life to pieces. Then it had seemed to him that nothing could ever mend it or make it again worth living; but as time crept on, baby fingers unconsciously had taken up the broken threads and woven them into something new--not the old, perfect happiness, but a life full of interest and contentment.

Such mates they had been, he and his children. All through the years, they had shared things: worked, and played, and laughed together until their relationship had grown into a companionship and a mutual comprehension that held little of authority on one side, but all of love on both. For that short, terrible season after the little mother had gone away, the house had been home no longer, but a place of desolation; and then the father had realised that his babies needed more from him, and that through them alone lay his way of peace. There is nearly always something bigger than one's personal grief, no matter how great it seems; and it is that one thing bigger that spells comfort. David Linton had never put aside his grief altogether, for it was part of himself. But he had put his children first, since to do so was part of his doctrine of doing "the square thing." Little and helpless, their happiness must not suffer. Somewhere, he knew, the little mother was watching them. Heaven could not keep her from watching her babies--from straining hungry eyes to see how he was managing the task she had left him. When the time came to go to her he must be able to give a good account.

He knew, looking back, that they had been happy. Life had held no cares beyond the necessary trial of leaving home for school--a trial always compensated by the joy of getting back. They had known no loneliness; Billabong and its wild acres, its free, simple life, had filled each day with work that was pleasure and with the thousand cheerful recreations of the Bush. He had tried to make them healthy, wholesome, and useful, holding as he did that no life was complete without all three attributes. They had repaid him by coming up to his standard in other things as well; by being sound in mind and body, honest as the day, and of a clean, straight courage. Throughout all they had been his mates. The little watching mother would be satisfied.

Now, for the first time in sixteen years, the parting of the ways must come. Authority had never been one of his methods; and if it had been, this was not the time to use it. He had taught the tall lad who stood before him his version of "the decent thing," and his teaching had come home; even in his pain he welcomed it. Jim would not have been Jim had he been willing to sit contentedly at home.

He looked up, and smiled suddenly at the boy's unhappy face. "Don't look like that, old son," he said. "It's all right."

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