The Runaway Settlers Read Free

built of stone or brick; churches with tall spires; shops with windows filled with goods, not jumbled all together as in the Berrima store, but each displaying its own specialty of elegant clothes, or saddles and harness, or tools, or jewellery, or toys. When the coach stopped at last a window directly opposite was set out with little dishes of gold, coarse and fine and scaly, and nuggets as big as Emma’s fingers. A notice declared that gold would be bought at the best prices. Diggers went in and out, looking very fine in their town suits of serge, their leather belts and slouched hats, and the gold watch-chains across their waistcoats.
    Bill couldn’t stop staring.
    ‘Mother, the goldfields! Look, that’s where they get their fortunes—that’s where the money is!’
    Busy gathering her boxes and bags together, Mrs Small paused as a tall bearded man strode by.
    ‘He’ll be pawning that watch-chain and the watch too, I shouldn’t wonder, before the year’s out. Easy come, easy go, that’s the way of the diggings, Bill.’
    ‘They say if you strike it lucky, you make a hundred pounds in a day!’
    ‘And what if you strike it unlucky and lose the shirt off your back?’
    ‘I’d start digging somewhere else!’
    ‘No, Bill. A goldfield’s a place where you plunder the ground, and move on. What we want is a home, a real home. A place to put my foot down.’
    ‘I’ll bet you don’t know where to find it,’ teased Jack.
    ‘Somewhere there’s a corner made specially for us.’
    ‘I wish it could be here!’ said Mary Ann.
    A cabriolet with a smart driver wearing kid gloves had just drawn up, and into this stepped the lady and gentleman who had travelled in the coach. It set off down the street at a pace that made the coach look old and clumsy—which, in fact, it was. A still grander carriage swept by in the other direction. There was a glimpse of a fashionable lady and her daughters; and riding on the back was a footman, in braided jacket and silk stockings! And Mary Ann stood there in her plain grey dress and her out-of-date bonnet.
    If only we could live in Sydney! she thought. But Father would surely find us in the end.
    Mrs Small made arrangements for the boxes to be kept until called for, and helped Jim to ride pick-a-back with Bill. She shook her head when Bill asked if they could take a cab instead; and Jack, sore as he was, agreed it was safest to walk.
    ‘Father might trace us by the cab. We’d be caught like rats in a hole!’
    ‘Is there somewhere for us to go?’ whispered Archie, troubled.
    ‘Yes, Archie,’ said Mrs Small. ‘I’ll tell you now: we have a secret friend.’
    ‘Secret! Does she know about you?’
    ‘Yes—she was my friend at school, in London. That’s who the eggs are for. But Father doesn’t know I was sending money, little by little, to be saved until there should be enough for us to come.’
    ‘It’s all been planned!’ cried Bill, disappointed because he thought it was his idea first, this running away.
    ‘But we won’t be staying?’ asked Jack.
    ‘First we’ll go to our secret friend. Then I really will take Jim to a doctor, for I think he’s very sick. Then’—she pointed to the harbour—‘on a ship.’
    ‘To Victoria!’ Bill said eagerly.
    ‘No, Bill, not those goldfields either.’
    Bill went quiet. His mother would never go to the goldfields, but the time would come when she couldn’t stop him from going, he told himself.
    Emma began to sing:
    ‘A ship, a ship, a ship!’
    ‘Will we go back to England?’ asked Mary Ann.
    ‘There’s not enough money for so long a journey. No! We must go where we can. We may count on five days more till your father knows—only five days. Tomorrow, if the doctor says it’s safe for Jim to travel—and I pray that he will—I shall visit the shipping offices. Bill—how are you managing with Jim? Shall we take a rest?’
    ‘People keep looking at us,’ said Archie.
    ‘Then we shall rest a little, on the