Our energies revived with the very first cup of tea, and we went for our usual evening stroll through the paddocks, with all our old appreciation; and on our return found the men stretched out on the grass beyond the Quarters, optimistic and happy, sipping at further cups of tea. (Sam’s kettle was kept busy that night.)

The men’s optimism was infectious, and presently the Maluka “supposed the waggons would be starting before long.”

It was only March, and the waggons had to wait till the Wet lifted; but just then every one felt sure that “the Wet would lift early this year.”

“Generally does with the change of moon before Easter,” the traveller said, and, flying off at a tangent, I asked when Easter was, unwittingly setting the homestead a tough problem.

Nobody “could say for certain.”  But Dan “knew a chap once who could reckon it by the moon” and the Maluka felt inspired to work it out.  “It’s simple enough,” he said.  “The first Friday—­or is it Sunday?—­after the first full moon, after the twenty-first of March.”

“Twenty-fifth, isn’t it?” the Dandy asked, complicating matters from the beginning.

The traveller reckoned it’d be new moon about Monday or Tuesday, which seemed near enough at the time; and full moon was fixed for the Tuesday or Wednesday fortnight from that.

“That ought to settle it,” Dan said; and so it might have if any one had been sure of Monday’s date; but we all had different convictions about that, varying from the ninth to the thirteenth.

After much ticking off of days upon fingers, with an old newspaper as “something to work from,” the date of the full moon was fixed for the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth of March, unless the moon came in so late on Tuesday that it brought the full to the morning of the twenty-sixth.

“Seems getting a bit mixed,” Dan said, and matters were certainly complicated.

If we were to reckon from the twenty-first, Easter was in March, but if from the twenty-fifth, in April—­if the moon came in on Monday, but March in either case if the full was on the twenty-sixth.

Dan suggested “giving it best.”  “It ’ud get anybody dodged,” he said, hopelessly at sea; but the Maluka wanted to “see it through.”  “The new moon should clear most of it up,” he said; “but you’ve given us a teaser this time, little ’un.”

The new moon should have cleared everything up if we could have seen it, but the Wet coming on in force again, we saw nothing till Thursday evening, when it was too late to calculate with precision.

Dan was for having two Easters, and “getting even with it that way”; but Sam unexpectedly solved the problem for us.