THE INTERLUDE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 238, 8 October 1928, Page 6

THE INTERLUDE.

Oh, those ever-recurring dishes! The early workers have departed, children gone to school, and now, heavy as a burden, is the thought of the hundred and one daily monotonous tasks that are the lot of the homemaker. The sun shines, and the restless soul rebels. Away with it all! I will be free, were it only for an hour. It is the work of a moment to slip through the garden fence, then, crossing the paddock, ° I am soon out on the open hillside. The air is glorious, and with a little vigorous climbing I am on the top of the hill, comfortably seated"at the root of a pine tree, enjoying the feast of beauty lying before me. Others have described the view from old Maungakiekie—most of us know and love it well, and the never-failing joy of its beauty under many moods. I think of that other day when the clouds raced across the sky, the wind scourging the waters of the Manukau as with a thousand whips, the wheeling seagulls and the restless spirit of the storm. To-day the Waitemata lies calmly in the sunshine, a brooding peace is over the waters and the Manukau is as if asleep. There is only the distant hum of the city's life, a faint clanging as of hauiinering on metal, the rat-tat of the hammer 011 wood; someone is building a house not far away, another of these dear, funny, little, red-roofed bungalows, each a home to someone. The lambs bleat a plaintive note, over and above the larks are singing "And the Glory," and for a golden hour the sheer beauty of it all brings healing ancP peace. Over the nearest grassy knoll one of the feeding flock regards me with a glassy stare. Surely Nature never produced anything more humourless than the countenance of a slieep! But I cannot stay too long on this hilltop of enchantment. Another scramble, this time downhill, and I am once again in my little kitchen with its array of the unwashed and the untidied, but now the dreaded tasks are "trifles light as air," for has not my strength been renewed? Truly the psalmist of old knew his hills. —J.S.