Читать книгу A Daughter of the Bush - Ambrose Pratt - Страница 4

Table of Contents

FOR perhaps an hour a heavy silence reigned. Then came a diversion. It was Mrs. Garfield's voice raised in song. She was evidently in a distant part of the shanty, most probably the bar-parlour, but every sound she made reached my ears distinctly. In raucous accents calculated to outrage the nerves of even a stone-deaf dingo, she quavered through "Killarney," word by word. Sometimes she stopped—no doubt to moisten the works—but with scrupulous honesty she always picked up the theme just where she had dropped it. Rover became desperately uneasy towards the finish. I begged him to restrain himself and he nobly endeavoured to comply, but it was no use. Mrs. Garfield terminated on a split high C that rent both our hearts. In spite of myself, I groaned, and Rover relieved his feelings with a long-drawn melancholy howl. Whether or not Mrs. Garfield noticed these tributes to her performance I am unable to conjecture, but mercifully, she did not sing again. She sobbed. I fancy that the gin must have plunged her soul into a state of mournful ecstasy, for after a period of laboured lamentation, she sighed forth this dolorous apostrophe: "Etty Garfield, Etty G—G—Gar—Garfield, what the divil would yer do if there was no more unsweetened gin in the world?" There was a short pause; then she supplied the answer to this cryptic problem in a tone of stern admonition. "Woman—you'd take to rum—yer know yer would!" There was another pause. Then: "Yer'd have ter!" she declared, "bad smell an' all. Yer know yer can't abear whisky. It turns sour on yer stummick. Yes; yer'd have ter!" In these five sentences admonition had merged into sorrowful complaisance, complaisance had become absorbed in philosophic resignation, and resignation had faded into a lugubrious conviction of predestination. I laughed till the tears ran down my cheeks. Meanwhile Mrs. Garfield wept dismally. Perhaps her gin bottle was empty—poor thing! At length, however, the noise of her wailing gave place to a succession of loud snores. It was a relief, I am sure, to all of us—particularly to Rover. He had been on tenter-hooks, but he now yawned, lay down and composed himself to sleep. I thought of Myrtle Hofer and wondered what was the cause of her dislike of me. What a strange girl she seemed; how cool and self-possessed and clever and self-contained; and above all how disdainfully aloof. Still she was kind—or was it merely charitable? At any rate, I was deeply in her debt and it did not become me to be critical. I think I must have fallen into a doze, for of a sudden I heard voices and one was Mrs. Garfield's.

"Ah! it's you, Mrs. Soames!" she was saying. "Yer needn't be staring at me like that. Can't a body be takin' a bit of a rest widout 'er highness' permission I'd like yer ter tell me."

"I've brung yer the milk, an' ther butter and the heggs," replied Mrs. Soames, "an' I've come to tell yer besides that Tommy'll be late wid the mate becase the pony got out av the paddick last night, an' he's had to shank it in to Yabba Gabba an' ther butchers; an' I want an extry bottle av beer becase I'm expectin' Mrs. Twomy ter dinner, an' she can't abide spirits."

"Well, well, Mrs. Soames; yer know where the beer is. Put the things in the safe like a good soul, will yer. Me leg is that bad with the rheumatics this blessed morning I'm just obliged ter nurse it."

"Humph!" sniffed Mrs. Soames, with a scorn that sent tremors down my spine, "it's gin's the matter wid yer leg, Mrs. Garfield; gin, and nowt else."

"Mis-sus Soames!"

"Glare away, Missus Garfield. Yer can't get up an' yer knows it."

"No—but——" cried the other in a terrible voice. There followed a loud crash and a sound of shattering glass. Without doubt mine hostess had hurled some handy implement at her mentor's head. It was equally evident that she had missed her mark, for Mrs. Soames' voice continued calmly and with undiminished scorn. "An' now ye've bruk yer motter: 'God bless our home!'" (Sniff.) "I would think yer did ought ter be ashamed av yerself. Yer a disgrace ter the town. That's what yer hare!"

"Mis-sus Soames!"

"Don't yer dare ter Missus Soames me, Missus Garfield! I hain't pore Jim Garfield, let me tell yer! Yer can't browbeat me. No, yer can't. Why, fer two pins——"

"Ju-lia," sobbed Mrs. Garfield.

There was a long pause. "Julia," wailed Mrs. Garfield.

"Huh!" sniffed Mrs. Soames. "It's Julia, now."

"We're both fe-fe-fe-males," wept Mrs. Garfield.

Mrs. Soames must have been touched. "Well, there," she said, "tain't, after all, none er my business if yer do make a beast er yerself. But dry up—do! I can't abide yer snivellin'."

"I've not had a blessed bite ter eat this blessed day. That's how it's gone ter me legs," sobbed Mrs. Garfield. "But I know what's what!" she added with a sudden note of dignified asperity. "An', anyways, it ain't fer you ter bully me, you wid yer breakin' yer back ter keep yer Bill off-en-er ther booze, an' can't do it neither."

"Bill's a man," retorted Mrs. Soames; but her voice was appreciably milder.

"And so's my Jim, but I don't lets him beat me!" crowed Mrs. Garfield.

Mrs. Soames had apparently hauled down her colours, for she made no reply. I heard her bustling about for a few minutes, then a voice I scarcely recognised for hers, it was so subdued and indeed affectionate, asked meekly, "Wud yer like me ter git yer anything, Mrs. Garfield?"

"Yes," snapped the other, "git yerself (hic) off'n my premises an' let me go ter sleep in peace."

"The bar's open, Mrs. Garfield."

"Thet's my business," with tremendous dignity.

"Oh, very well," Mrs. Soames now had the huff. "Hi suppose as how yer've no hobjection ter me seein' of the hinvalid."

"That's really wot yer come so early for, I knows. Yer can't kid me."

"An' jist as well I did hif this is ther way yer treats him. Not arnother soul in the house, too. Where hev yer put him?"

"He's in ther lean-to (hic). Oh, git out, do."

"Very good, Missus Garfield. I will git out. An' I hopes as how you'll wake in a more comfortable temper. Good morning—Mis-sus Garfield."

Mrs. Garfield's reply was a prolonged and bitterly insulting snore. Mrs. Soames must have stood regarding her adversary for a full minute in full-hearted anger, since quite that time elapsed and at least four more snores were hurled at her, before I heard her move. But at last she departed and a good deal to my trepidation her footfalls unmistakably approached my room. Presently, without any preliminary ceremony, the door swung open on its leather hinges, and on the threshold I beheld a picture such as Whistler would have loved to paint. My visitor was small and old, and garbed from head to foot in grey—save for one big splash of scarlet—her apron. And the light behind her framed her in a scintillating aureole, that made her little bare and boney arms shine like sticks of weather-beaten ivory, and the edges of her face glow like the rim of a red-hot guinea. She was the most exquisitely ugly little creature my eye had ever looked upon; and yet her eyes were beautiful and full of twinkling kindliness. "I'm Mrs. Soames," she announced; "my man's ther blacksmith 'ere, but he's gone to ther Rush. 'Ow's ther laig?"

"Nicely, thank you, Mrs. Soames. Miss Hofer and Mrs. Garfield looked after that."

"Yer do seem fixed up—properly," she conceded, after scanning the bed. "That's Myrtle; she's a ginger fer thoroughness. Clean sheets, too, I see; an' my land, ther floor's bin scrubbed, positive! More Myrtle! Mrs. Garfield—hum!—she——"

"She suffers from rheumatism," I suggested. Mrs. Soames giggled. "S'pose yer must a heard us," she said. "She's lyin' in a corner er ther drawrern-room, and heaven or earth won't shift her till ter-morrer. But yer mustn't put it agin her, Mr.——"

"Tolano," I suggested.

"Mister Terlarner," she went on. "She's a decent body when she's sober, an' sometimes she keeps off'n er ther gin fer as long as six months at a stretch. I specs it's how as helpin' Myrtle mendin' yer leg druv her to it this go."

"I should be grieved to think that, Mrs. Soames."

"Oh, yer needn't, young man. One excuse is as good as ernother ter Mrs. Garfield when ther cravin' comes on her. Yer laig hurtin' any?"

"Not a bit. I hardly feel it."

"Time enough. When ther bone begins ter knit it'll give yer old beano at ther dog-fight. I've bruk both er mine, so I ought ter know. Was on yer way ter the Rush when it happened, I hear?"

"Yes."

"'Ard luck, an' no mistake. I'm real sorry. Smith's party got a sixty-ounce nugget yesterday, and Daebarn cleaned up forty fer two days' graft—mostly slugs; all pretty gold—pretty ernuff ter go inter a shop winder. Nearly all on 'em's doin' fair, too—ther others I mean, even the parties workin' on the foothills."

"And here am I laid by the heels," I groaned, involuntarily, "lying on my back idle and helpless while old mates of mine are making their fortunes seven miles away."

"Sorry I spoke," lamented Mrs. Soames. "I oughter guessed it'd make yer feel sick inside. Comes er bein' an ole fool jabberin' without thinkin'. But buck up, young man. Parson Jones says everything 'appens fer ther best, an' he ought ter know. He only said it last Sunday. 'Praps it's a blessin' in disguise. Yer never know yer luck."

I grinned to show I did not care. "No doubt a blessing in disguise," I agreed.

Mrs. Soames nodded. "We'll all do our level best to cheer yer," she said brightly. "Mrs. Twomy'll be erlong this after'. She's been laid up at the Wakool 'orsepital with pleurisy. She's a real card, she is, and a terror fer ther men. As there ain't none here just now 'cept you, I specs as 'ow she'll make it a point ter nurse yer."

"I should not like to trouble her."

"Yer couldn't, me son, bein' a man, fer she's twice married whatever, an' 'er chances o' pickin' up ernother 'usband ain't too rosy. It's my opinion she'd take on a nigger if nothin' else offered; and lor! though you ain't 'ansome, 'zactly—you ain't a nigger. 'Sides yer young."

"You terrify me Mrs. Soames."

Mrs. Soames shook with mirth. "An' bashful, too!" she chuckled. "My, we're goin' ter have great times in Nandlelong."

"I am to understand that your friend is a man-hunter?" I enquired, morosely.

"No, a widder," corrected Mrs. Soames, and as though that were the last word possible to utter on the subject, she changed the topic. "Myrtle Hofer's goin' ter fix up yer vittles, she tells me?"

"She has promised to prepare my lunch."

"She's a fine cook, Myrtle. She'll do yer proud, 'specially as she found yer. She'll make yer a stoo, likely's not."

"Oh!"

"Ye'll lick yer chops when yer just smell her stoo."

"You make me feel hungry in anticipation, Mrs. Soames."

"She's good at other things than cookin' though—Myrtle."

"Indeed."

"You bet. She's as good as er vet fer sick cows an' horses with ther glanders. She'll put yer laig right in lessern no time."

"She appears to be a very learned young woman?"

"So she'd oughter be—brung up at ther Fort Street Trainin' College."

"She teaches in the State School here, does she not?"

"Usual—but she ain't got much ter do just now—only about nine girls ter bang knowledge into—ther boys 'as mostly lit out ter ther Rush at Yabba Gabba. There's only my Tommy, and the Levy's three brats left, an' they're all wanted home fer yakker, milkin', fetchin' wood and meat an' such like."

"Do Miss Hofer's parents reside in Nandlelong?"

"Lordy, no. 'Er ole man's a cocky farmer up top er ther Noo England plains. Myrtle sleeps at ther school house an' boards at ther Post Mistress's—Missus Inglehaere's."

"I see."

"She's a queer girl, Myrtle. Up every morn at daylight winter an' summer an' climbs ther Mount of Olives—fer exercise, she says. She's got a terrible lot er books an' she's always readin'. But she don't take much account er men. Bill Ickerspoon's clean crazy about her; so is Jerry Arbight; but she don't seem ter care fer either of 'em, though both could give her a decent 'ome!"

"A bit stuck-up, perhaps," I hazarded.

Mrs. Soames closed her left eye. "'Tween you an' me," she answered, "she's bidin' her time—flyin' fer 'igher game. They say as how ther School Inspector is the person she's settin' 'er cap at. He's twice her age, but 'e's got a good screw an' 'e must 'a saved a tidy bit 'aving no one but himself ter keep all these years."

But this confidence had made me feel mean. I, therefore, asked for a cup of water in order to make a break in the tide of my visitor's garrulity. She fetched one immediately and sighed as I drained it. "Could 'er done that myself once," she mused.

I gave her back the cup. "You don't care for water?" I enquired.

"I got ter think er ther spasms," she answered sadly, "so I has ter put a drop er somethin' in it when I drink anythin' but tea."

Then she brightened up. "What part er ther country might yer come from?" she demanded.

"Sydney, madam."

"A big place?"

"Fairish."

"I've never bin there, but they say it's more'n twice as big as Wakool. Is it?"

"I should say even bigger still."

She shook her head. "They can keep it, fer me. Why, even Wakool bothers me; gives me ther blues an' makes me feel I can't breathe proper. Ole man alive?"

"No, madam; my father and mother both died ten years ago."

"Ah, well! ye've had time ter git over it. What did ther old cove do for a livin'?"

"He was a lawyer."

The lady sighed. "Pore man! I specs he's sorry fer it now. Got any brothers and sisters?"

"One brother living."

"Deary me! deary me! No sisters! An' what might he be doin'—ther boy I mean?"

"He is a lawyer."

"Well, well, well! An' is he makin' a do of it?"

"I believe he is fairly well off, Mrs. Soames."

"An' he lets you go about the country—prospectin' an' breakin' of yer laig? Him well off?" The horror in the old lady's voice was the last straw. I could no longer restrain the laughter that had been consuming me. But she was not in the least offended, only surprised. "I can't see nowt to laugh at," she kept repeating over and over; and when I had recovered my composure she instantly resumed her inquisition.

"I s'pose you quarrelled with him?"

"No," said I, "we are the best of friends."

"P'raps you're the black sheep of the family an' he's tired o' helpin' you?"

"He has never lent or given me a sixpence in his life."

This was plainly a staggerer. Mrs. Soames bent her brows together, stroked her chin with her forefinger and thought hard.

"I specs," she said at last, "you won't let him 'elp you?" and she fixed me with two bright eyes that contained forty separate qualities which each defied a contradiction.

I surrendered at discretion. "I admit, Mrs. Soames, that he has grown weary of offering to help me. He is a splendid fellow in every way and generous to a fault."

"Married?"

"Yes."

"And yorself?"

"Do you think I look a lady's man?"

She smiled capaciously. "Yer don't," she conceded. "But take my tip and keep yer eye skinned fer Mrs. Twomy, or maybe ye'll be mendin' of yer evil ways. Ah well! I'll hev ter be goin' now, an' that's a fact. I've got ther dinner ter git ready an' ther fire ain't lighted even yet. But I'll see yer agin soon. S'long!"

"Good-bye, Mrs. Soames, and thank you kindly for your call."

"I've enjoyed it," she declared, and vanished. Rover followed her, a circumstance that spoke volumes. It showed that Rover—an unerring judge of character—had approved the old lady as a good, kind-hearted creature who could be confidently trusted to relieve his hunger. For perhaps an hour thereafter I listened to Mrs. Garfield's snores. Then Rover returned, looking almost aggressively sleek and comfortable. He had evidently gorged himself and was too full to spare me a word. He did not even trouble to reply to my salutation, but curled up in a corner and went instantly to sleep. I was yawning for the hundredth time when a shadow of a sudden fell athwart the bed. It was Miss Hofer, carrying a small table. Her movements were completely noiseless. She had fancied me asleep. She placed the table at my elbow and then brought in a tray containing a bowl of soup, some toast and the half of a grilled chicken. The soup was for me, the chicken for herself. She took the latter outside, and sitting on a stool in the shade of the verandah, she began to eat—all without a word, for she paid no attention to my thanks. I polished off the soup and toast in two-twos, and thought hungrily of the chicken. I could hear her munching it distinctly. The torture of Tantalus was a mere circumstance to mine. Eighteen hours had elapsed since my last meal, and besides, I was a breathing animal, not a ghost. I could not bear it long.

"I wonder whether you think I lie in any danger of fever?" I ventured, in tones I strove to render invitational of discussion.

"Do you fed feverish?" came her answer.

"Not exactly."

"Why do you ask then?"

"I fancied that perhaps you were lunching out there for fear of exciting me?"

"Exciting you! What do you mean?"

"Raising my temperature by inspiring gastronomical anticipations you might conceive it hazardous, from a scientific point of view, to satisfy."

"I suppose that rodomontade means that you have finished your soup," she answered with contemptuous coolness.

I was too crushed to retort. I heard her rise and move away across the boards, but three minutes later she returned, and re-appeared with a plate containing the other half of her chicken and some steaming chipped potatoes.

"You must not expect to obtain any spirituous liquor while I am in charge of you," she announced as she handed me the food. "Tea or water you may have—but nothing else."

"Oh, indeed!" I gasped.

She met my enquiring glance and frowned. "I suppose you wish to make a quick recovery?" she asked impatiently.

"I'm afraid you have misinterpreted an unlucky remark of mine, Miss Hofer," I replied. "The flaws in my equipment don't really include a craving for alcoholic stimulants. I'm sorry if you are disappointed, but the fact is, I never touch spirit when I can avoid it."

She turned scarlet, slowly but surely from throat to forehead, yet she did not turn her head nor withdraw her eyes from mine.

"It appears that I have foolishly misjudged you," she said quietly. "I hope you will forgive me."

"On condition that you excuse me also, for having till this moment fancied you hard-hearted and unsympathetic."

"You thought me that?" she cried.

"Even after your great kindness on the hill? Yes, I did; but I was wrong. Won t you finish your lunch in here, Miss Hofer?"

She nodded, and went out to fetch her tray and a chair. She was silent for quite a long while. So was I.

I glanced at her occasionally, but she was plainly preoccupied, and she ate mechanically.

Suddenly, however, she began to speak. "I have been here for two years, and during all that time seldom a week has passed without a disturbance caused by drink. Almost all the men drink too much. I don't mean to say they are dipsomaniacs or anything like that, but periodically they go on the spree. It's their chief amusement. It is horrible—and the more so because they are such decent good people when they keep away from the accursed thing. I've tried and tried and tried to do them good, but it's not any use. They make vows and promises, but they always break them. Only a month ago young Joyce Spalding fell down a shaft and was killed; he was drunk. Oh! if you knew him. He was one of Nature's noblemen, with that one fatal weakness. But what do you think? Instead of being warned by his dreadful fate, almost the whole town got drunk the night of his burial, and there was fighting and brawling till daybreak. You wouldn't wonder at my hatred of drink and my contempt for drunkards if you had known Joyce Spalding, and could guess what my life has been these two years past."

"I am not wondering, Miss Hofer. I should like you to tell me."

But she shook her head and smiled. "It would depress you, and I must not forget you are an invalid." She rose and took away the tray. Later on she brought me a cup of tea. "I have no class to teach this afternoon—I am one of the unemployed, perforce. Perhaps you would like me to read to you?"

"I would prefer you to talk."

"Very good, but I shall first get my needlework." She was away an hour, and she had not used all the time looking for her sewing. She had changed her frock. She came back clad in a complete costume of brown muslin that left her throat and elbows bare. I was charmed to observe that her arms and neck were exquisitely moulded and as white as alabaster. And the brown stuff suited her eyes and her complexion admirably. She made no excuse for her long absence, but sat down and at once commenced sewing. It was some intricate piece of fancy work—a toilet table-cover, I believe.

"I have been chatting with Mrs. Soames; she has given me your history," she observed.

"What a quaint lady she is! She put me through an extended catechism."

"And did you answer her truthfully, Mr. Tolano?"

"Why, of course."

"Then you are really—only by way of being a digger temporarily—for amusement perhaps?"

"Is that what Mrs. Soames has concluded?"

"She considers you either a duke in disguise, or a black sheep—an outcast from some family of honest folks; she has not quite made up her mind which yet."

"The queer old thing has evidently an imagination in keeping with her curiosity."

"I," said Miss Hofer, "am vastly curious and not a bit imaginative. I am prepared to believe what you may tell me—at the foot of the letter. Now I have given you a first-rate opportunity to snub me."

"It is quite irresistible. I shall punish you as you deserve."

She looked up, flushing. "Oh!" she cried.

But I held up an admonishing hand. "You ought to know that there is but one natural force greater than a woman's curiosity, and that is a man's desire to talk about himself. You have only yourself to blame if I bore you with the history of my life."

"I do not expect to be bored," she said with a very pleasant smile.

"That is because you expect to hear something romantic. I defy you to deny it."

She blushed very prettily indeed. "You are by way of being acute," she murmured. "Yet you must not plume yourself too much. I am not a bread-and-butter miss by any means. Commence, then."

"As your Highness pleases——"

"Mr. Tolano!"

"Miss Hofer!"

"I am an incorruptible democrat."

"Then in the name of the great Australian democracy permit me to salute you and inform you that I, commonly known as Joe Tolano, first saw the light of day in the good city of Sydney five and thirty years ago come Michaelmas. I was born of rich but reasonably honest parents, and I was brought up in the worship of respectable conventions."

"Your story opens well," she said.

"Therefore it must end badly if the law of compensations is not to go for nothing."

"I hope not."

"Judge for yourself. I was educated at a Sydney State public school, and afterwards went through the Melbourne University. My father wanted me to become a lawyer, but I had a silly notion that I had been cut out for a sculptor. I spent four years in a Tuscan studio before I discovered that I was meant by nature to dig clay, not mould it; and then my father died, to my great surprise comparatively a pauper. My share of the estate was £400. That sum enabled me to pay my debts and to return to Australia. I found my brother practising at the law and doing fairly well. He offered me a share in his business if I would qualify. But an ineradicable predilection for undiluted facts sent me instead to a desk in a commercial house, where I speedily learned the lesson that, in order to succeed in life, one must not scruple to prey upon one's neighbour's needs and weaknesses. I searched Australia for an occupation where this rule did not obtain—being, as I am free to admit, an idiot—and I found one alone—gold digging. Being a logical sort of idiot, I embraced it, and as I am also a tenacious sort of idiot, unless Fortune smiles upon me I shall live and die a digger. There you have my history in a nutshell."

Miss Hofer had laid down her sewing. She was regarding me with a curiously intent, far-away, unthinking gaze that I found somewhat disconcerting. But I don't think she was aware of it.

"You do not wish me to believe that you despise—wealth?" she asked presently.

"No, indeed."

"But—please tell me."

"That I would disdain to acquire wealth by any means that would directly or indirectly oppress or impoverish another living being: that is my commercial creed. I have already admitted it is idiotic."

"Yes," she said, lowering her eyes, "it is idiotic. Some people might call it noble, but not I. I do not set myself above Nature; and Nature intends the strong to prey upon the weak. You are probably a Socialist?"

"Not being a politician, I cannot say."

"Supposing that of a sudden you were to be made very rich: what would you do with your gold?"

"I should try to make it benefit as many people as I could."

She shrugged her shoulders. "Worse and worse; you are a communist."

"I beg your pardon," I retorted. "I may be an idiot, but I'm not a fool. I would take care never to be poor again, believe me."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, with a rich, full-throated laugh. "It is evident that you are not a fool. One may have hopes for you. I had begun to think you nothing but a dreamer. But I see now that you lack that sort of madman's usual mission. Your lamp is merely for yourself. You do not seek to throw its beams on other people's pathways whether they will or not; and you are not looking meanwhile for a martyr's crown."

"Neither am I looking for a convert's, especially at the present moment," I responded tartly. "I have not lived thirty-five years without discovering that the worst and the best of the world's old laws alike depend for maintenance upon woman's deep-rooted detestation of progression. At heart you are all conservatives, Miss Hofer; and when you are the chief victims of the customs that your blind conservatism sanctions and rigidities you expect men to bear witness to your unselfish devotion instead of to your folly."

The girl bit her lip and her eyes flashed. "Not all of us, sir," she corrected. "The Australian women have shown ere this that they can think as broadly as their brothers, and act, too—but I forget, you are not a politician!"

"Are you?"

She waved the question aside. "I read, and I vote;" she gave me a demure smile. "Apparently you do neither."

"Oh, I read at times."

"De Quincey, Cervantes, Milton, Heine, and Burton."

"You have been examining my swag!" I cried.

"Your blanket is hanging on Mrs. Garfield's line to dry," she answered smiling. "If cost me half an hour's work and half a bar of soap to make it look like a blanket again."

"It got muddied in a swamp near Doughboy's Hollow," I explained shamefacedly. "Sorrel had the impudence to mistake a patch of slime for a bed of grass. But the books?"

"You shall have them to-morrow. Mrs. Soames is putting on new covers."

"I am accumulating obligations every hour," I muttered discontentedly.

"Do you really mind?"

"Yes."

"Which one?"

"Every one."

"You do not discriminate?"

"You had no right to wash that blanket. The thought of it enrages me."

Her lips trembled, and she took up her sewing again. "It was nothing," she said, presently, in a low voice. "I was really born to the wash-tub."

"You!" I gasped. "Impossible."

Her face coloured hotly. "Two of my sisters are servant girls in Bathurst now. I should have been, too, but for winning a State School scholarship, which paid for my education at a Woman's Training College in Sydney. That is how I became a teacher. Why did you say—'Impossible'?"

"Because you look—too——"

She glanced at me and I paused, confounded. "Yes?" she asked, and her eyes commanded me to speak.

"Beautiful!" I whispered, and I coloured as I said it.

She nodded. "I am beautiful, I think," she said calmly. "But I am plain—compared with my sister Margaret. Yet that is not an explanation."

"No," I replied, "'patrician' was the word I should have used. I was a fool."

"The word applies to Margaret," she cried, her eyes aglow. "Ah! if you could see her. She is nearly as possible an angel. And her mind is more lovely than her person. She is the only thing I love in the whole wide world."

I was too astonished to speak. I could only stare at her. She seemed to be dreaming aloud and to have forgotten my existence. "Margaret would adorn a throne," she said, "and they have sold her to a Dutch dairy farmer for three Jersey cows, some poddy calves and four Berkshire pigs!"

"Miss Hofer!" I gasped.

She gave me an inscrutable look. "Here is a romance to your hand," she muttered. "My father is a German peasant who settled on the New England plains more than five and twenty years ago. He has a barren farm and thirteen children, eleven of whom are girls. Yet he loves his farm best. He is poor, and beauty has a marketable value. He bred us all in habits of obedience. Margaret has no thought of resistance, although Carl Anderson has been haggling over the fourth pig for the last six months. An eager lover—ah yes! but then his ardour is nicely tempered with providence, nicht wahr? Margaret tries not to be too proud of him."

The story and the sardonic bitterness of the tone in which she related it produced on me an indescribable effect. I was idiot enough to want to spring out of bed and rush off like another Quixote to the rescue of Margaret. However, I managed to suppress the impulse and also to enquire calmly, "And when is the happy day?"

"Fortunately father is a strict Catholic—therefore not until after Lent," replied Miss Hofer.

"Can nothing be done meanwhile to save your sister from her fate?"

"Oh yes! a miracle might happen, for instance a plague break out among Anderson's swine and so prevent him paying the stipulated price. Or I might find a gold-mine and ransom her from both her tyrants. Or another suitor might come along and offer father a better bargain. Oh! indeed yes!—much might happen in three months."

"It is a long time," I commented stupidly. She put her hands behind her head and stared me in the eyes, a morose and moody sphinx.

"It is a thousand centuries and at the same time half a day—a second! Ah, if I were a man——"

"What would you do?"

"I should beat those traffickers in a woman's soul and body to the very point of death—ay—though one is my father. And then I should take Margaret away where they could never reach her."

"I see—but are you absolutely helpless now?"

"My salary is sixteen shillings a week."

"A pittance."

She nodded, smiling bitterly. "I believe you would help me if you could," she presently observed.

"Yes," I said. "But I cannot. What of your brothers?"

"They think only of the new pigs."

"But your mother?"

"She is dead, but were she still living she would only think of the new cows."

"It is a tragedy!"

She suddenly stood up and moved to the door. "I must put on some soup for your supper," she said quietly. "It takes time to boil, soup—to be any good. And I want you to be well nourished. I want you to get well very quickly."