And I was agreeable.
"Aye-I'll sell it back to ye!" I told them. "But at a price, ye ken--
at a price! Pay me twice what I paid for it and it shall be yours!"
There was a Scots bargain for you! They must have thought me mean and
grasping that day. But out they went. They worked for the money. It
was but just a month after war had been declared, and money was still
scarce and shy of peeping out and showing itself. But, bit by bit, they
got the siller. A shilling at a time they raised, by subscription. But
they got it all, and brought it to me, smiling the while.
"Here, Harry--here's your money!" they said. "Now give us back our flag!"
Back to them I gave it--and with it the money they had brought, to be
added to the fund for the soldier boys. And so that one flag brought
three hundred pounds sterling to the soldiers. I wonder did those
folk at Christchurch think I would keep the money and make a profit
on that flag?
Had it been another time I'd have stayed in New Zealand gladly a long
time. It was a friendly place, and it gave us many a new friend. But
home was calling me. There was more than the homebound tour that had
been planned and laid out for me. I did not know how soon my boy
might be going to France. And his mother and I wanted to see him
again before he went, and to be as near him as might be.
So I was glad as well as sorry to sail away from New Zealand's
friendly shores, to the strains of pipers softly skirling:
"Will ye no come back again?"
We sailed for Sydney on the _Minnehaha_, a fast boat.
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