Dono’s Christmas
Dono’s Christmas moves to the substantial world of “Quambaroo”, a large and prosperous farming property:
“Dono!”
A small boy in a diminutive sailor suit, who was working his way up the big grevillea tree, paused a moment as the cry rang out; then, with a little irrepressible laugh, he climbed on.
“Dono!”
Again he paused, and as he did so the call was re-echoed in a thin pipe from the foot of the tree.
“Dono—Faver’s after you.”
The climber’s laugh reached the ears of the youthful sentinel below.
” ‘Spect I’ll get up to the nest ‘fore he comes around here, Wops. You lie low,” he called; and Wops obediently retired into a plumbago bush.
“Dono! John! Can’t you answer?” and with the last word on his lips a tall man came quickly round the corner of the verandah. Dono promptly lay flat along a branch; but his father knew too much to look for him on the ground, like any ordinary mortal, and in a moment he had spied the little figure 100 feet above. He caught his breath for a moment, and then spoke gently,.
“Come down out of that, Dono—I want you.”
The Trustee of The Mary Grant Bruce Family Trust owns the extant copyrights to this story.
First Published in: Christmas 1900
First publication: The Leader
Place First Published: Melbourne
Republished by Juvenilia Press in 2011 in Mary Grant Bruce: The Early Tales