"Jack," called Betty, a few days afterwards, "come in a minute. I want to speak to you."  
Jack passed in rapid review his conduct of the last few days, and decided that there was nothing Aunt Betty could want to lecture him about, and yet the brevity of the summons sounded like the preface to a lecture. He came up the paddock rather reluctantly.
 
"Well," he said, joining her in the verandah, but not sitting down. "Don't keep me long, there's a dear. I'm making an aeroplane, and it's frightfully exciting."
 
"But I think the news I have for you will be frightfully exciting too," she said smiling at him.
 
Jack's eyes shone like stars. "Is it that father's coming?"
 
Betty's heart smote her that she had raised the boy's hope so high only to dash it again.
 
"Not quite so exciting as that, but something that will get you more ready to go to England. Father wants you to go to school in Melbourne, a boys' school that Uncle Tom knows about, and thinks a good one. Father is very anxious that you should be working hard now so that you will be able to take your place with other boys of your age when you go home."
 
Jack seized his cap from his head and sent it spinning into the air with a whoop of triumph.
 
"I should say it just was exciting! Why, Aunt Betty, it's glorious."
 
His delight was so natural, that Betty would not dim it by any expression of personal regret. Besides, although she did not tell Jack this, his father's decision was the result of her own advice. She did not consider that the experiment of sending him to the State school had answered. He was too well known to every boy in the place, and was contracting acquaintances she did not care for him to make, and imitating follies that were by no means harmless, and she believed a complete change of companionship would be better for him and for his progress in learning. She knew that Captain Stephens was making not only a name but some money by his inventive skill and mastership of aircraft, and that it was his full intention to give Jack a good education, so she had written some months back suggesting the change of school and saying that she believed her influence over Jack stood a better chance of making itself felt when he was away from her and constantly in need of her than now, when more than half his time was spent out of her sight, and when her presence at home was so completely a matter of course that he scarcely realised its value. And from Jack's father had come an entirely reassuring answer. No mother could have his little son's interests more entirely at heart than Betty, and he was quite willing to accept her judgment, and that of the man who had acted the part of a kind and wise elder brother to Jack, and to send him to the school Tom Chance recommended.
 
"And you need not worry about ways and means. Let Jack have a proper school outfit. You will know what he needs better than I. It was certainly my wish at first that he should remain with you at all hazards until I could come and fetch him, but the time has been longer than I at first expected, and I quite see the force of your argument that he shall be able to take his proper standing with other boys of his age on his return, and possibly the education of a State school would hardly prepare him for this. Is it asking too much that Tom Chance will keep an eye to him as regards religious matters? A boy's first plunge into school life is an important era in his life. I'm not sure that Mr. Chance is still in the colony, but if you are in touch with him tell him what I feel about it."
 
All this was running through Betty's mind as she listened to Jack's outpouring of delight.
 
"And when am I going, Aunt Betty?"
 
"Next term if you can be taken in. I've already written to the head-master about you, for this has been in our heads for some time, although I could not mention it to you until I knew father's decision. Now I see no reason why you should not travel back to Melbourne under Uncle Tom's care."
 
Jack fairly danced with joy.
 
"I'm off, Aunt Betty; I'm off to find Uncle Tom, and to tell Eva. She'll mind rather much, I fancy, but I'll tell her she can write to me if she likes, and I'll answer as I get time," and away he flew, leaving Betty half amused and half heart-sore.
 
"A budding lord of creation," she said to Tom later in the day when he came to talk matters over with her.
 
"Women and girls find their right place in looking after him."
 
The words were playful, but there was an under-lying sadness in them.
 
"It's partly the fault of the women and the girls who spoil boys and men, isn't it? But there's scarcely one amongst us but owns in his secret heart that all that is noble in him he owes to the influence of some good woman—a mother, a sister, or an aunt—and Jack, come to man's estate, will look back and call Aunt Betty's name blessed."
 
Tears stood in Betty's eyes, but her smile was sweet and tender.
 
"If that prophecy comes true, I shall consider that life has been worth living," she said.
 
"Let us hope that there may be other causes by that time which will make your life very much worth living; others who will need you even more than little Jack, a husband, perhaps, and—children of your own."
 
The colour mounted to Betty's face flooding it from brow to chin, then faded leaving her deadly pale. Tom was standing over her looking down on her with a smile that told her more clearly than any words that he loved her, that the husband his imagination pictured was himself.
 
"Betty," he said, using her Christian name for the first time, "I did not mean to speak yet. I meant to wait until I am recalled to England and have a likelihood of a home to offer you, but your regret at losing your Jack led me on. Should I do, can you think of me as the husband? Betty, my dear, my whole heart cries out to you, I love you so. I don't know when it began, but I almost think it was the first day we ever met, and you caught me at cricket. It will be the biggest blow of my life if you catch me out now. Betty, my sweet one, what answer will you give me? My whole happiness hangs on it. Is it yes, or no?"
 
Betty looked into his face with a tremulous smile, put out her hands to him, and the next moment was clasped in his arms.
 
"My darling," he said, as he reverently kissed her, "you shall never have cause to regret your decision."
 
In the first few moments of their tumultuous happiness neither wished to speak; it was enough for Betty to feel Tom's arm round her, and to know that she was his for evermore, his helpmeet, sharing his home and work, the one man in the world she had ever loved, for a pretty helpful girl like Betty had had other men who wished to marry her, but not one of them had even set her pulses beating, much less suggested himself as her husband, but now she had entered her kingdom! Was ever girl quite as happy as she was at this moment?
 
Later on they talked of their future. Tom had mapped out work that would take him about two years to carry through, and then he meant to go home.
 
"And you will come with me, Betty darling, come with me as my wife," he said joyously. "I wonder if you realise what you are doing in marrying me. It's rather like catching a lark and shutting it up in a close dark cage, for my work will lie in some slum parish probably, where sorrow and sin will close you in on every side, and after your free country-life out here, you will feel choked by it often and often."
 
"I daresay I shall, but—I shall have you," said Betty, simply. "Shall we go and tell mother?"
 
Mr. and Mrs. Treherne's consent was a foregone conclusion, and separation from their only daughter being as yet a thing in the distance, left them free now to rejoice in her happiness. Ted's congratulations when he came in from the farm were rather less hearty.
 
"It's rather a mean trick to play," he said. "You had all England to choose from, and you come out here and want to carry off our Betty, and there's not a girl who can hold a candle to her in all the colony, is there, mother?"
 
"Not one," said Mrs. Treherne, giving the hand she held a squeeze.
 
"And that's the very reason why I want to take her home when the time comes," said Tom with a happy laugh. "I want them to see the kind of girl the colony can produce. I don't underrate her, Ted."
 
"I won't stay and be discussed as if I wasn't here," said Betty, blushing a little. "Ought not we to go and see Clarissa, Tom?" so they walked off together down the paddock, hand-in-hand.
 
"And that's how they'll walk off one day for good and all," said Ted, watching them moodily from the verandah. "Hang it all, mother. I wonder you can take it so quietly. Why can't she marry some man in the colony, and stay in the land she belongs to? They will only look down upon her in England," but that fired Mrs. Treherne into speech.
 
"Look down on her! Look down on my Betty! Isn't it because I know that to Tom she is the one woman in all the world that I give my consent to his carrying her away? But don't rub it in, Ted," and her tone was a little weary. "She's not going yet for a year or two, and every mother has to face the fact that the young ones she has reared and loved will fly off sometime and make nests of their own. It's God's law, and there is no escaping it."
 
Ted bent and brushed his bronzed cheek against hers.
 
"No fear, mother. There's one who will stick by the old birds, and keep their nest warm and dry for them," he said gruffly, and stirred by an unusual emotion he strolled off to the farm and solaced himself with a pipe.
 
Meanwhile no explanations were necessary with Clarissa. She just glanced at the smiling faces, saw the clasped hands, and burst into a laugh.
 
"So it's settled at last," she said, her own hands closing over their clasped ones, "but the wonder to me is why you have been so long about it, for you've known your own minds long enough. Betty, my dear, you're a lucky woman."
 
"As if I didn't know it," protested Betty, as Clarissa kissed her.
 
"But I remember your telling me almost the first night I came that you should like a sister just like Betty," Tom grumbled.
 
"So I did, so I do, but all the same I call her a lucky sister in marrying you," and with that assertion Betty was well content.............