Page 22 - An Australian Lassie

They were close to the great iron gates when the man broke the silence; pointing beyond them he remarked--

"This is where your home will be in the future, John."

John considered the prospect thoughtfully and shook his head--

"T'd rather go home," he said. "Let me go home."

"No," said his father, "it can't be done. T ought to have fetched you away sooner, only T shirked a duty. Open
the little gate, T see the big ones are padlocked. Push, it's stiff."

They walked up the long red drive, John's mind busy over the questions he wished to ask his father and he
began to lag behind considering them.

"This will be your home," repeated Mr. Brown quietly, "and it's a marvellous thing how life has arranged
itself. The turn of Fortune's wheel, we may say. Walk quicker, John."

When they stood before the great front door, Mr. Brown became retrospective again.

"We played here together," he said--, "down these very steps, along these very paths. Tt is strange how life has
fallen out--how my boy will be---- " He put out his hand and pulled the bell vigorously, then turned his back to
the house and surveyed the garden.

"Ts it a school?" whispered John. But before his father could reply the door had rolled back and a man-servant
stood looking at them.

Mr. Brown walked in, put his hat on a table, motioned to John, and opened a door at one side of the wide hall.

"Tt's me--Brown," he said as he entered the room. "T've brought the boy."

John followed very quickly, being curious now. His father stood half-way across the room, looking hesitating
and apologetic.

A man of sixty or so, with a red, merry-looking face, and an unmistakable sea-captain air, glanced up from a
paper he was reading.

"Eh?" he asked.

Then he sent his look--it was a quick darting look that saw everything in the twinkling of an ordinary person's
eye--to the thin badly-dressed figure in the rear. "Eh? The boy? Oh--ah! My newly-found grandson."

"He is scarcely what T had hoped to find," said Mr. Brown, apologetic still. "Yet his mother was a
good-looking woman and---- "

"Be hanged to looks," said Mr. Carew. "He'll get on all the better without 'em. And you were never anything
to boast of yourself you know. What's his name?"

"John."

"Um! John Brown. John Carew-Brown, we'll say. Tt's a pity it's not John Brown Carew."

"That's a matter that can easily be altered. Tt can be merely John Carew, if you like, and let the melodious