The Adventurous Seven Their Hazardous Undertaking

Excerpt

The Great Idea

The village schoolroom was packed as full as it would hold, and the air was so thick that, as Sylvia said, it could almost be scooped up with a spoon. The lecturer was stout and perspiring freely, but he meant to do his duty at all costs, and he rose to the occasion with tremendous vigour, declaiming in really fine style:

"It is a poor man's paradise, and there is no place on the face of this earth to rival it. You reach it by a pleasure cruise across summer seas, to find it has the finest scenery your eyes have ever beheld and a climate that is not to be beaten."

"Hear, hear!" shouted Rumple, clapping vigorously. He had led the applause from the very beginning of the lecture, only it was a little awkward for the lecturer that he mostly broke into the middle of a sentence instead of waiting for a pause, as a more judicious person might have done.

"Encore!" yelled Billykins, forgetting for the moment that it was not a concert, and, as the lecture had already lasted for upwards of an hour and a half, it might have proved a little tedious to some of the audience if it had been repeated from the very beginning.

The rows of people sitting in the seats behind broke into a wild uproar of stamping, thumping, and clapping which lasted for nearly five minutes, and, of course, raised more dust to thicken the atmosphere.

The pause gave the lecturer time to recover his breath and wipe some of the perspiration from his face; it also made him rather cross, for he had somehow got the idea that he was being laughed at, which was quite wrong, because all seven of the Plumsteads, from Nealie down to Ducky, thought that he was doing very well indeed.

"If you don't believe what I say," concluded the lecturer, "just come out to New South Wales and see for yourselves if I have not told you the plain, unvarnished truth; and I repeat what I have said before, that although it is no place for the idle rich, for the man or the woman who wants to work it is not to be beaten."

It was at this moment that Nealie leaned forward to whisper to Rupert, who sat on the other side of Don and Billykins:

"Would it not be lovely for us all to go? Just think how we could help dear Father, and he would not be lonely any more."

"Rather!" ejaculated Rupert, making a noise which was first cousin to a whistle; then he passed the whisper on to Sylvia and Rumple, and that was how the great idea started.

When the lecture was over they all crowded forward to speak to the lecturer, explaining in a rather incoherent fashion the reason of their keen interest in what he had been saying, and their hard and fast intention to emigrate as soon as possible.

"Our father lives in New South Wales; but most likely you have met him," said Nealie, whose knowledge of Australian geography was rather vague, and who supposed that, as the lecturer came from Sydney, he would most probably know everyone who lived in the country known as New South Wales.

"I can't remember him offhand, young lady, but perhaps if you tell me his name I may recollect whether I have met him," said the lecturer, smiling at her in a genial fashion....