"Your uncle"s aunts must be quaint old birds then," Jerry said unbelievingly.
"But they aren"t birds at all, they"re _ants_," cried Grizzel.
A loud cackle from Hugh, whose grin had been growing wider and wider, now interrupted the discussion: "Ho, ho, ho! One of you is talking about aunts--your Aunt Maria--and the other is talking about ants--the beasts that go to the sluggard," he exploded. "You _are_ a pair of m.u.f.fs! He, he, he!"
""Go to the ant, thou sluggard"," Mollie quoted slowly. "Oh-- _Jerry_--"
It took them some time to recover from this little misunderstanding.
"Next time I see Aunt Mary--bites like red-hot nippers--oh dear!"
"Well, come on and dig now," Hugh ordered at last, twisting a cord neatly round his last peg as he spoke. "If you go on laughing like that you"ll soon begin to cry, and this mine will never get started."
Thus adjured they rolled up their sleeves and set to work. Pickaxes were of no use in that sandy soil. The boys used their spades, and the girls carried the turned-up sand to the creek, washing it with the utmost care in the cinder-sifter. But their efforts met with no success. Neither gold nor anything else, except pebbles, rewarded their toil.
"It"s always like that," Hugh said at last, sitting down on the edge of the hole they had dug. "Gold is the most gambly stuff imaginable.
We know a lady who was as poor as a washerwoman one day, and then at breakfast one morning she got a letter to say her goldmine shares had struck a reef, and she got so rich she simply didn"t know what to do with her money. She came to see Papa about it. She was an old maid, so naturally there wasn"t much she wanted. You never know who is going to be rich and who poor, with a goldmine. Some of these pebbles are quite valuable," he continued, running a handful of shingle through his fingers, "there are amethysts and opals and topazes in some river beds. I have never found one myself, but I"ve picked up some pretty good crystals."
"I think I"ll go and look for mine," said Grizzel. "I hid it in a tree near here. I am tired of gold-digging, and my feet are hot. I shall dabble them in the creek and eat an orange."
She got up as she spoke and went off towards a particularly gaunt- looking tree. Its trunk had split open, showing a hollow large enough to hold several people; for some distance around its roots protruded through the ground like old bones. Grizzel disappeared into the hollow trunk, whence she presently emerged with an air of triumph. "I"ve got it safe and sound. Now I"m going to get an orange."
Jerry eyed the orange-grove lovingly. Digging is thirsty work.
"Let"s all go," said Hugh. "Orange juice is one of the most restorative things in the world; if we eat enough we will be ready to make a fresh start in half an hour or so. Very likely we shall have better luck next time."
It was hot, and the change from the glaring sunshine into the cool dampness of the orange-grove was very pleasant. The beautiful fruit hung invitingly from the branches with a colour and fragrance unknown to London shops. There were many varieties, and the Australian children wandered critically from tree to tree.
"I"m not sure whether I like navels or bloods best," Hugh remarked, "but perhaps on the whole, for pure refreshment, navels."
He stopped, as he spoke, before a tree on which grew oranges larger than the London children had ever seen in their lives--immense, smooth, opulent-looking globes of rich golden yellow. For a time silence reigned, while six people covered themselves with juice, "Like the ointment that ran down Aaron"s beard," Grizzel said, and the ground in the neighbourhood a.s.sumed an auriferous hue that made the inventor sigh.
"I wish we could find a place where nuggets lay about like that," he said rather pensively; "it would be awfully jolly."
"It would be," agreed the others, "most awfully jolly."
"I think I"d as soon have oranges as gold," Grizzel said reflectively, looking down at the peel-strewn earth. "Think how nice it would be if you were in the very middle of a scorching desert, and dying of thirst like the men in _Five Weeks in a Balloon_, to find a lovely orange tree covered with juicy oranges. It would be nicer than finding gold."
"You do talk silly slithers," Hugh said derisively. "Who ever found a beautiful orange tree in the middle of a desert? You _might_ find gold and bribe an Arab to give you water."
"You _might_ find an orange tree in an oasis," Grizzel said huffily.
"I am going to bathe my feet in the creek. Go and look for your old gold. You won"t find it."
"All right, Carroty-cross-patch. You won"t get any if we do," Hugh replied politely.
"Don"t want it, Goggle-eyed-guinea-pig." Grizzel got up and walked off, her sun-bonnet dangling down her back and her red curls waving over her head. No one took any notice of these little amenities. No one remembered that the ointment which ran down Aaron"s beard was like brethren dwelling together in unity--a good and pleasant thing.
They were all brothers or sisters and accustomed to such mellifluous modes of address.
"We"d better go back and dig in a new place," said Hugh; "the light will begin to fade before very long."
They gathered up their orange peel and buried it tidily, and then stepped out of the cool grove into the hot sunshine with some reluctance. But gold-digging is not mere play, as Hugh reminded them. If you want to find a large nugget you begin by looking for small ones, and the search undoubtedly entails some hard work.
The new diggings were no more productive than the old. The boys worked industriously, digging widely rather than deeply. It was decidedly monotonous work, and d.i.c.k began to think that for pure excitement gold-digging showed up poorly beside football. Their backs ached, their hands were blistered, and the shingly pebbles got into their shoes. They were hot and thirsty, and into the minds of four of them crept a suspicion that Grizzel had chosen the better way of spending the time. They could see her sitting on a boulder, her feet in the water and her hands occupied with her crystal, which she was rubbing in a leisurely way on a stone, as one sharpens slate-pencils. The afternoon wore on; the sun seemed to gain in speed as he slanted down the sky, and tree shadows lay about the ground like long thin skeletons. A herd of cows, on their way to the milking-shed, trailed lazily past the weary diggers, reminding them of tea-time with its refreshing drinks and soothing cream and b.u.t.ter.
Jerry stood up, dropping his spade and stretching his arms above his head.
"I"m tired," he announced. "Let"s hang our spades on a gummy tree and sit beside Carrots for a bit. I"d like to dabble my little feet too, before walking home."
Hugh a.s.sented somewhat reluctantly; he would have preferred to continue digging while daylight lasted. "We"ve done _something_," he said, as they took off their shoes and stockings; "we"ve found where gold isn"t, and that"s rather important."
"I know lots of places where it isn"t," said d.i.c.k, putting his hands in his pockets, "I could have told you that without digging for a whole afternoon, if I"d known it was important."
"Of course I mean when it isn"t where it might be," Hugh amended, taking no notice of d.i.c.k"s gibe. "It"s what Papa calls the process of elimination. You"ve got to do it with almost everything worth having really. You"ve only got to look at this river bed to see there"s pretty sure to be something worth having there--in fact I know there is. It may not be gold, but it"s something."
"How do you know it?" Mollie asked curiously. "I don"t see anything particular about the river bed. It doesn"t look half so likely as the gold patch in the road beside your cherry garden."
"I can"t tell you how, but I do. Just you wait and see. To-morrow I think I"ll try the old place again. I shall go on trying till I find something, either gold or precious stones. There might even be diamonds; there are in some river beds."
"Look," said Grizzel, holding out her hand with the stone in it, "I have rubbed a bit off one side at last. If I rub long enough it will come bright all over."
A small, roughly eight-sided crystal lay in the palm of her hand.
Six sides were dull and colourless, the remaining two sides were clear and transparent.
"I rubbed my bit off exactly opposite the bit that was clean already," she went on, "so that I could look through it at the sun."
She turned the crystal over and held it up as she spoke. A dazzling flash of pale-green light darted out, as though an unearthly finger were pointing at the sun. It was gone in a moment, and the stone looked dull and rough as before.
"What was that?" Grizzel asked, in a startled voice. "Is it going to go off like fireworks?"
"Give it to me," said Hugh, taking it from Grizzel"s unresisting fingers. He held it up as she had done, and again the pale-green light flashed out. He moved it slightly from side to side, and with his movements the green light took on the shining hues of a rainbow.
"It"s like a diamond," said Prudence in an awed voice.
"It _is_ a diamond," cried Hugh. "I knew it! I knew it! I said so!
Grizzel found it in the place we dug last year. Grizzel found it, but it was me that looked for it, because I knew! Where this one was there will be more. _We have found a diamond bed!_"
"If Grizzel hadn"t rubbed it so hard you would never have known,"
Prudence reminded him. "She rubbed that bit for _weeks_ last year."
Hugh turned the crystal over and over, examining it on every side.
"Diamonds are terrifically hard," he explained more calmly. "It takes months to cut and polish a diamond properly. Grizzel"s pretty good at sticking to a thing; I"ll say that for her. I"m glad the first diamond was found by her."
"Well--it will take me some time to polish it all over," Grizzel said, with a sigh. "If I did nothing else all day long but rub it on a stone it would be clean in about six months."
"Who does this land belong to?" Jerry asked. "Is it your father"s?"
"Oh, no--it"s Mr. Eraser"s. For miles around the land is his. That"s the man we are staying with."
"Then the diamond is Mr. Fraser"s, not yours or Grizzel"s," Jerry p.r.o.nounced.