A Little Bush Maid

A Little Bush Maid, by Mary
Grant Bruce

The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Little Bush Maid, by Mary Grant
Bruce #3 in our series by Mary Grant Bruce
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Title: A Little Bush Maid
Author: Mary Grant Bruce

Release Date: August, 2005 [EBook #8730] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on August 5,
2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LITTLE
BUSH MAID ***

A LITTLE BUSH MAID by MARY GRANT BRUCE

CONTENTS
* I BILLABONG
* II PETS AND PLAYTHINGS
* III A MENAGERIE RACE
* IV JIM'S IDEA
* V ANGLER'S BEND
* VI A BUSH FIRE
* VII WHAT NORAH FOUND
* VIII ON A LOG
* IX FISHING
* X THE LAST DAY

* XI GOOD-BYE
* XII THE WINFIELD MURDER
* XIII THE CIRCUS
* XIV CAMPING OUT
* XV FOR FRIENDSHIP
* XVI FIGHTING DEATH
* XVII THE END OF THE STRUGGLE
* XVIII EVENING
CHAPTER I

BILLABONG
Norah's home was on a big station in the north of Victoria--so large that
you could almost, in her own phrase, "ride all day and never see any
one you didn't want to see"; which was a great advantage in Norah's
eyes. Not that Billabong Station ever seemed to the little girl a place
that you needed to praise in any way. It occupied so very modest a
position as the loveliest part of the world!
The homestead was built on a gentle rise that sloped gradually away on
every side; in front to the wide plain, dotted with huge gum trees and
great grey box groves, and at the back, after you had passed through the
well-kept vegetable garden and orchard, to a long lagoon, bordered
with trees and fringed with tall bulrushes and waving reeds.
The house itself was old and quaint and rambling, part of the old wattle
and dab walls yet remaining in some of the outhouses, as well as the
grey shingle roof. There was a more modern part, for the house had
been added to from time to time by different owners, though no

additions had been made since Norah's father brought home his young
wife, fifteen years before this story opens. Then he had built a large
new wing with wide and lofty rooms, and round all had put a very
broad, tiled verandah. The creepers had had time to twine round the
massive posts in those fifteen years, and some even lay in great masses
on the verandah roof; tecoma, pink and salmon-coloured; purple
bougainvillea, and the snowy mandevillea clusters. Hard-headed people
said this was not good for the building--but Norah's mother had planted
them, and because she had loved them they were never touched.
There was a huge front garden, not at all a proper kind of garden, but a
great stretch of smooth buffalo grass, dotted with all kinds of trees,
amongst which flower beds cropped up in most unexpected and
unlikely places, just as if some giant had flung them out on the grass
like a handful of pebbles that scattered as they flew. They were always
trim and tidy, and the gardener, Hogg, was terribly strict, and woe
betide the author of any small footmarks that he found on one of the
freshly raked surfaces. Nothing annoyed him more than the odd bulbs
that used to come up in the midst of his precious buffalo grass;
impertinent crocuses and daffodils and hyacinths, that certainly had no
right there. "Blest if I know how they ever gets there!" Hogg would say,
scratching his head. Whereat Norah was wont to retire behind a
pyramid tree for purposes of mirth.
Hogg's sworn foe was Lee Wing, the Chinese gardener, who reigned
supreme in the orchard and the kingdom of vegetables--not quite the
same thing as the vegetable kingdom, by the way! Lee Wing was