Читать книгу Billabong's Daughter - Mary Grant Bruce - Страница 3

Table of Contents

THE long country road ran eastward, in a straight line of unending weariness. There was nothing to break its monotony; even the few trees that had been spared when the first fencing was erected were sparse and stunted—wind-blown, twisted things, with tall, slender trunks bending away from the fierce west winds; their only foliage, tufts of weak leaves, flung high in air. On either side ran the lines of wire fencing, as straight as though they had been ruled. Grey plains lay beyond them, dotted here and there with clumps of tea-tree, left to furnish shelter for the sheep. A drain, wide and deep, ran north and south across the flat country. Once it had been all morass-land, a shallow lake in winter, in summer a half-dry bog; a good place for snipe and wild-duck, but not to be considered as a profitable holding. Then the estate to which it belonged had passed into new and energetic hands, and the morass had been cleared and drained. Very many snakes had perished in the process, and the wild-fowl for which it had long been a sanctuary had flown away, protesting, to regions further back. The plain had been ploughed, fallowed, and a rough crop of oats had been taken off it: then the estate had been subdivided and sold again, and where once miles of bog had stretched and cranes and herons had sailed majestically, settlers’ cottages appeared, and shy little children, three or four on one rough pony, scurried along the tracks to the school-house at Four-Cross-Roads. Which, no doubt, was as it should be; but some of those who had known it of old sighed for the days when, instead of grey plain, hot and bare in summer, there had stretched the cool, green recesses of the morass, a perpetual hunting-ground for adventurous young people who did not mind snakes.

Jim Linton and his friend Wally Meadows had often roamed there; usually accompanied by Jim’s sister Norah, whose only fear, throughout her “teens,” had been that Jim and Wally might at any time be hampered by remembering that she was a girl. She had managed to obscure this fact so successfully that the boys had always accepted her naturally as a chum, with very few limitations; and even the years of the Great War, which had whisked them all to Europe and played strange tricks with them, had not altered the old footing. Billabong, the Lintons’ station, was just the same when they came back to its welcome: the old servants who waited breathlessly for their coming seemed unable to realize that “the children” had managed to grow up. The old routine of work and play claimed them all naturally: and still, to Norah and the boys, there was nothing so good as a sunny Billabong day, with a good horse to ride and the thick grass in the hills and gullies like a green carpet, springing under the galloping hoofs. Motors and telephones and electric light and other commonplaces of modern existence had come to Billabong—sniffed at a little by Murty O’Toole, the head stockman, and Mrs. Brown, who had ruled the homestead since Norah was a baby, and who was regarded by the station as a species of stout angel in petticoats. But the paddocks were the same, with their wide spaces of undulating galloping ground; and when work with the cattle had to be done there was no modern invention to take the place of a daring rider who could swing a stock-whip—of a gallant horse, able to turn “on a sixpence,” with an uncanny knowledge of just what a bullock might do. And these things were the breath of life to Jim Linton and his chum Wally Meadows, and to Norah, who was the mate of both.

David Linton, the father of Jim and Norah, watched them always with comprehension in his deep-set grey eyes. The War, that had definitely aged him, with its long strain and its sharp anxieties, seemed to have left them as children. It had caught them on the borderline of childhood, scarcely released from school, and for four years had flung upon them the responsibilities of men and women. Like thousands of other fathers, David Linton had sorrowed over those four lost years of Youth. Then, with the ending of the long strain, when home stretched glad arms to receive them again, Time seemed to put back the marching hands of his clock so that they might find their vanished playtime. The years slipped from them: it seemed a kind of dream that there had been fighting, suffering, stern, hard work. The district said, “It’s a sight for sore eyes to see them Billabong kids home again!” And not even Jim—it was one of the strangest parts of the dream that Jim had actually been Major Linton!—would have noticed anything peculiar in being called a Billabong kid.

Wally, of course, was Billabong’s only by adoption, but he “belonged” so completely that there were times when he forgot that he had ever possessed any other home. He had been Jim Linton’s chum at school—a shy, lonely little Queensland boy to whom Jim’s heart had gone out: Jim having been always a protective person. When he discovered that Wally was an orphan, and had for his only home the house of a married brother, it had seemed to Jim quite necessary to adopt him: and Wally had slipped into the way of spending all his holidays at Billabong. The brother, Edward Meadows, welcomed the arrangement with relief. He was so much older than his happy-go-lucky little brother that he had never felt that he really knew him; moreover, his wife showed no desire to add Wally to her cares, and openly hinted that the management of the boy’s share of their father’s property, in addition to his own, was as much as should be expected from Edward. So Wally went to Melbourne to school, which made returning for holidays a difficult matter: and Jim Linton did the rest. To Mrs. Edward Meadows, Jim Linton appeared a kind of amiable Providence. She showed her appreciation of him, as well as her affection for Wally, by knitting each a pair of socks when they went to the War.

Occasionally, since their return from England, Wally had suffered from an uneasy feeling that it was time that he set about some regular work in life. But, as Jim pointed out, there always seemed too much to do on Billabong. It was difficult to say where play ended and work began on Billabong, since anything to do with horses always presented itself to the boys—and Norah—as “a lark”: but in one way or another Jim and Wally contrived to be perpetually busy, and were never without jobs ahead that seemed to demand all their personal attention. They had learned much from Mr. Linton and Murty O’Toole: the squatter had always been determined that when the time came for them to manage places of their own they should not be ill-prepared. Men at the sale-yards knew them as good judges of cattle. When Wally developed periodical fits of uneasiness, declaring that he was only a loafer on Billabong, Jim would kindly offer him weekly wages as a jackeroo: which generally ended the matter, for the time being, in a cheerful scrimmage.

Then there were their friends to be helped along the path of land-management in Australia—Bob Rainham and his sister Cecilia, better known as “Tommy,” who, being English and “new-chums,” had been partially adopted by the Lintons, who had helped them to settle on a farm a few miles from Billabong. Ill-fortune had fallen upon Bob and Tommy, for a bush-fire had come along one New Year’s Day, and had burned them out within a few months of their settling in; a disaster which they had met with such dogged determination that it seemed more than ever necessary to help them. The boys and Norah were constantly at the Rainhams’ farm, to save them, as they loftily explained, from the consequences of having been born in England. This remark also was apt to lead to a scrimmage.

To-day Jim and Wally had been to a sale of stock with Bob, and Norah had spent the day with Tommy, making marmalade. This undertaking had ended well; the marmalade was the right colour, it had “jellied” beautifully; and, after a cup of tea in Tommy’s spotless little kitchen, Norah had set out for home.

She was riding a horse of Jim’s, Garryowen, whom Jim considered no longer equal to the task of carrying his great length and weight. Garryowen was not in his first youth, but his spirit was as gay as when Jim, a lanky schoolboy, had first raced him over the plains; and to-day he was clearly of opinion that he had not been ridden enough. He pranced and gambolled round the Rainhams’ stable-yard when Norah had mounted him, until the gentle soul of Tommy was filled with dismay. The Lintons had taught Tommy to ride, but she still regarded all horses with awe, and many with distrust. Just at the moment she distinctly distrusted Garryowen.

“Norah, do be careful! I’m sure that horse isn’t a bit safe!”

“Why, he’s as safe as a rocking-chair!” Norah had responded, cheerily. “It’s only his playful way, Thomas dear—don’t worry.”

“I’d rather he played with all four feet on the ground at once,” Tommy had answered. “Are you sure he’s all right, Norah?”

“Why, of course he is—he only wants a gallop. He hasn’t had enough work, and he thinks he’s a four-year-old again. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Tommy: I’ll take home the long way, by the Bog Road; I can let him out along that grass track, and he’ll be tame as a rabbit afterwards.”

“All right.” Tommy’s answer had been a shade doubtful. “But do take care, Norah darling, for he really seems extremely mad, and that road is so lonely.” She had held the gate open as Garryowen sidled through. “Bob says there are new settlers on one of those bog farms: English, he hears. I want to go over and see the woman, some day soon. I never was a lonely Englishwoman in this country, but I can imagine that if I had been I’d have been very lonely!”

“Right—we’ll go and see her together. Good-bye, old girl.” Norah had given the impatient Garryowen his head, to which he responded by breaking into a canter that felt as though he had a spiral spring in each hoof.

Half an hour later she pulled him into a walk at the end of the long road that had once been all bog and now ran beside the deep channel that drained the old morass. They had had a satisfying gallop, and Garryowen had sobered considerably, and had ceased to pretend that he was a half-broken colt. Norah’s face was flushed and happy.

“Well, I’m glad Jim doesn’t think you’re up to his weight, old man,” she said, “for I don’t think there’s a horse on Billabong to touch you.” She patted his hot neck. “It’s certain you’re up to mine, anyhow: my arms feel as though they were half pulled out. Hullo—that looks like a runaway!”

She checked Garryowen, shading her eyes with her hand, while she looked across the flat, bare paddocks. A light sulky had spun round a corner and was tearing along at a furious rate: its occupants, so far as Norah could see, a woman and a child. The woman appeared to be holding the reins, but so far as the horse was concerned, she had no part in the management of the vehicle. The road they were upon was a short one: presently they flashed round another corner, the sulky taking it on one wheel and righting itself miraculously, and went off in a direction that took them away from Norah, who knitted her brows anxiously.

“What on earth had I better do?” she asked herself. “If I gallop after them that silly horse will only get madder and madder. He’ll tire himself out on these quiet roads but he may tire out that poor soul first. I’ll canter after them, anyhow. I wish he’d turn into the blind track that leads to Gardiner’s: he’d have to stop, then.” She shook Garryowen into a swift canter.

In the sulky, the driver, a little woman with a keen dark face, clung to the reins, endeavouring to brace herself against the floor, but finding her legs all too short to steady her. She was silent, her lips tightly pressed together. Beside her a little girl of about ten years bounced on the seat, clinging tightly to the iron rail. At intervals the little girl said firmly, “Bad scran to the baste!”—to which her mother invariably responded, “Don’t be talkin’ now, but howld tight!” They bumped and rattled along the uneven track, narrowly missing the side fences of several culverts. Once the little girl asked, “Will he do this all night, do you think, now?”

“I dunno will he, at all,” panted her mother.

The yellow horse in the shafts appeared ready and willing to run away all night. Each corner round which he bolted seemed to supply him with fresh energy. He laid his ears back, stretching out in a lumbering gallop that rocked the sulky wildly from side to side. Finally, however, he chose a corner turning into a grass track, almost unused, which ended in a fence right across: seeing which obstacle the woman gasped, and said, “Howld tight, now, Mary-Kate, when he leps it!”

“Bad scran to the baste!” said Mary-Kate; and held tight.

The yellow horse, however, preferred discretion to steeplechasing. Seeing the fence that checked his heroic career he slackened his pace, dropping from a gallop to a lurching canter, then to a trot: and finally pulled up with his nose about a yard from the fence, over which he looked uncertainly, as if to say, “I could jump it if I tried!”

“Hurry out, now, Mary-Kate!” ejaculated the mother. “ ’Tis the way he’ll take a twisht round and start off on us again, wance he gets his breath!” She held the reins while the little girl made a flying leap to the ground: then she followed, leaving the yellow horse to his own devices.

That animal appeared to have lost all desire for further exercise. The sweat dripped from him as he stood, head hanging, feet planted widely apart: as limp as the reins that trailed on the ground beside him. He seemed unconscious that his wild career had come to an end, or that his passengers had got out and were regarding him with unfriendly eyes. Lower and lower drooped his head. He went to sleep.

“If I was a man, an’ had a gun, an’ could let it off, I’d shoot that horse,” said Mary-Kate solemnly.

“Don’t be talkin’ that way, an’ your father after payin’ five pounds for him,” rebuked her mother. “Well, indeed, I knew there was something wrong when he told me that was all they asked for him, for ’tis the good cut of a horse he is. Blessed Hour, I was in dread he’d jump that fence!”

“If he had, now, d’you think he’d have taken us an’ the little car with him?”

“He would not.”

“Then what would have happened to us?” Mary-Kate demanded.

“I dunno. Something would have bruk.”

“ ’Twas the divil’s own luck he didn’t,” said Mary-Kate. Her eyes kindled suddenly. “But wouldn’t it be the grand thing now, to see him do it, if only it wasn’t ourselves that was in the little car!”

“Howld your whisht, now,” said her mother nervously. “There’s that much wickedness in that horse I’d not put it past him to hear you, an’ start off. There was a man I knew in Tipperary had one that colour, an’ there was no end to the divilment he had in him. Whatever you didn’t expect was the thing he’d do. There’s no known’ the treachery of a yalla horse.”

“I dunno why would Father want to be buyin’ one, then,” grumbled Mary-Kate.

“ ’Twas by reason of his cheapness,” said her mother simply. “Indeed, and the poor man knew there was something wrong, but there wasn’t another horse for less than double as much, so he chanced it. ‘We’ll hope for the best,’ says he: ‘if he don’t kill anny of us we’ll maybe get the price out of him,’ he says. And now he’s nearly killed the pair of us; an’ how to get home I dunno.”

“Will you not drive him again, Mother?”

“I will not,” said her mother firmly. “Never did I think I’d be out of that little car without me four bones bruk, nor yours neither: ’tis not meself’ll trust meself in it again. An’ I don’t even know where the house is. I wonder why did we leave Ireland, at all?”

Mary-Kate twirled on one foot, looking over the level landscape.

“All these roads is like each other, with the weary length of them, and their wire fences,” she said. “Wouldn’t you give something, Mother, to see a twisty bit of an Irish lane, with the high hedges each side and the red fuchsia comin’ out in them?”

“I would so,” said the woman. In the three words there was a world of homesickness.

“Glory be!” said Mary-Kate suddenly—“is it a hunt?”

“Where? What do you mean?”

“There’s some one leppin’ fences, anyhow. ’Tis a lady, I believe—look now, Mother, she’s comin’ at a fence! Watch, she’s rushin’ him at it—ah, the beauty, he’s over! Isn’t that a flippant lepper, now!” Mary-Kate, her own plight quite forgotten in the Irish love of a good horse, stared open-mouthed, her thin little face glowing.

Norah, in the pursuit she dared not make too close, for fear of exciting the yellow horse to increased energy, had come across some paddocks where old log fences still existed. They were a good way from the bog now, and she knew her bearings—many times had she and the boys coursed hares over these paddocks. So she cut across country, taking the fences as they came, to the great contentment of Garryowen; and presently, pulling up for a moment, saw the sulky with the yellow horse, and the woman and child standing near it.

“Well, they aren’t killed, anyhow,” she said, with relief. “Some of the harness broken, I suppose. I’d better go and see.”

She took Garryowen over two more log fences, and in the paddock beside the blind road where the derelict sulky stood, found her way barred by wire again. She checked her horse, looking about her: and then saw that the strange child had raced along the lane and was holding a gate open, uttering excited shrieks.

“Hurry, now, ma’am! Hurry! I’ll shut it behind you!”

Norah was not clear as to the words, but it was evident that she was needed quickly. She cantered briskly across the paddock, pulling up outside the gate.

“Have you lost him, ma’am?” queried Mary-Kate anxiously.

“Lost what?” Norah asked, bewildered.

“The fox.”

“I’m not after a fox,” Norah said, laughing.

Mary-Kate’s face fell.

“I thought ’twas part of a hunt you were,” she said; “an’ ’twas the way the fox had got away on you. Isn’t there any more of you, at all?”

“Not a soul,” laughed Norah. “To tell you the truth, I was after you!”

“After me, is it?” Mary-Kate’s mouth opened wider yet.

“Well—your sulky. I saw your horse bolting, and it seemed to me I had better come after you; and across country was the quickest way. Neither of you hurt?”

“We are not,” said Mary-Kate; “an’ small blame to that misfortunate horse that we’re not in the ditch this minute. He bolted as long as he wanted to, and when he was tired of it he just stopped and went to sleep. An’ there’s no knowin’ the number of times he near had us over, nor the posts we missed by the skin of our teeth. But”—suddenly she looked up at Norah, her Irish eyes unexpectedly twinkling—“ ’twas the grand drive it was, entirely!”

Norah gave a little laugh of comprehension.

“You weren’t frightened, then?”

“I’d not say I wasn’t,” said Mary-Kate. “First I was frightened, and then I was annoyed. But you couldn’t help enjoyin’ the drive, ma’am!”

“And your mother?” asked Norah. “It is your mother, I suppose?” She had dismounted, and with her bridle over her arm was walking towards the woman who still stood beside the sulky.

“Yes, ’tis me mother. She was too frightened to be annoyed, but she’ll be wild to-morrow. An’ now we don’t know how to get home, for there’s nothing’d take me mother into the little car again: an’ more by token, we dunno where home is, we’ve gone round so many corners!”

“Where do you live?”

“Beyond Four-Cross-Roads. That’s the school I’m to go to when we get settled.”

“Oh, I’ll get you home,” Norah said.

Mary-Kate looked doubtful.

“Thank you, ma’am, but I dunno will you ever get me mother up into the little car. She’s a wee woman, but terrible determined.”

“And would you go?”

Mary-Kate’s eyes danced.

“I would so,” she stated, emphatically. “When I’m bigger I’ll not let a horse say he’d had the best of me. Fine I’d like to see that one taught manners!”

“We’ll teach him manners,” said Norah, laughing. “What is your name, little Miss Ireland?”

“Me name’s Mary-Kate Reilly,” responded that lady. “I dunno how would you know ’twas from Ireland I am.” There was a quick note of suspicion in her voice. Her keen eyes looked sharply upward at the tall girl. Then she grew reassured. No, this new Australian person was not laughing at her.

“Well, you see,” said Norah, “I have been there.” She smiled down at her.

The change that came over little Mary-Kate Reilly was remarkable. For a moment she stared unbelievingly; then her mouth slowly widened into a delighted grin, and she shot from Norah’s side, racing forward to her mother.

“Mother! Mother! The lady isn’t in a hunt at all, and it’s ourselves she’s after, to take us home—and she’s been to Ireland! Mother, she’s been to Ireland!”

Norah turned aside to slip Garryowen’s bridle over a post. Then she came across the grass with her quick, light step, to where they waited for her. “And it wasn’t until I saw their eyes,” she told Wally later, “that I knew what homesickness could be.”

“How are you, Mrs. Reilly?” she said cheerfully. “I’m Norah Linton—a neighbour of yours, as neighbours go in our country.”

“Mary-Kate’s after sayin’ you know ours, Miss,” said Mrs. Reilly.

“I wouldn’t say I know it,” Norah said, smiling “I’ve travelled round it a bit, and I stayed a good while in Donegal. Long enough to make good Irish friends. And there isn’t a bit of it that I didn’t love, Mrs. Reilly.”

The little woman drew a long breath.

“I was born in Donegal,” she said, simply. “Tell me, Miss, were ye ever at a wee place called Croaghegly, in the Rosses?”

“Why—I drove through it,” Norah cried. “We didn’t stay there, but we got out for an hour. A lonely place near the sea, where they grew tiny crops on little patches of land among the stones—there were stones everywhere in that country. Wee crops, a few yards square: we saw some of the men cutting them with a reaping-hook. No one in this country would believe it, if one told them.”

“Ay,” said Mrs. Reilly. “And if you’d been there at other times you’d have seen the women carryin’ seaweed up to those little patches of soil—carryin’ it in big baskets up the hills from the shore. ’Twas the only thing we could get to hearten up the poor cold soil. Three feet deep, them baskets was; we carried them on our backs, with a strap goin’ across our foreheads: and the seaweed’s no light weight. We brought it, an’ the men burned it an’ dug the hot ashes into the ground, an’ sowed the seed as quick as they could before ’twas cold on them. Quare little crops, Miss. But people lived on them—an’ the fishing.”

“I know,” Norah said. “There were little clean, whitewashed cabins everywhere: the storekeeper at a place near told my father he had eleven hundred names on his books—and they all paid, he said. Why, if you gave all that country to an Australian he’d think he couldn’t make a living off it. My father said he wouldn’t have believed it, if he hadn’t seen it.”

“No—ye learn what work is in the Rosses,” said Mrs. Reilly. “An’ did you see the women knittin’, Miss?”

“Rather—Dad and the boys bought socks from them. Beautiful knitting, too, and they never stop doing it. You see them walking on the roads or sitting on the stone walls; but always knitting.”

“We couldn’t afford to stop, when I was a girl,” said Mrs. Reilly, a trifle grimly. “ ’Twas no grand price we got for it, either; the big English shops bought our knittin’, though we didn’t know it at the time; their agent was Micky Breheny, that had the shop in Glenties, an’ ’twas there we had to walk with our knittin’—twelve miles there an’ twelve back, carryin’ the work an’ bringin’ home the groceries that Micky paid us in. The English shops paid him cash, an’ he paid us in goods: that was the way of it. They sent us the wool, an’ we knitted it while we’d be carin’ the sheep on the hills. One-an’-six a dozen pairs they paid.”

“For knitting a dozen pairs!” exclaimed Norah.

“Yes, Miss. ’Twas a dale of knittin’, an’ it didn’t look a big price when we saw it in Micky’s groceries—though they were heavy enough by the time we got home. An’ threepence-ha’p’ny for knittin’ a pair of long stockings like the gentry do be wearin’, with the fanciful tops. They sold them stockings in the big shops in England for eight-an’-six a pair. But we didn’t know anything about that. All we knew was, times were mortal hard, an’ ’twas something if we gerrls could earn a bit of food. I heard tell they learned the value of work better, afterwards, an’ got better paid: but that’s the way it was when I was a gerrl.”

“Did you leave the Rosses when you were married?”

“ ’Twas before that, Miss. Me father and mother died, an’ all I had left was me sister, that was married an’ livin in Cork. So I went to live with her, an’ I tuk a place in an officer’s house, an’ there I met a boy of the Munsters—he was a corporal when he married me, but he was sergeant-major before the end of the War.” The little woman’s head lifted proudly.

“That was splendid, Mrs. Reilly,” Norah said. “My brother saw a lot of the Munster Fusiliers in the War—and the Dublin Fusiliers, too. Great fighting regiments, he said.”

“Never anny better,” said little Mrs. Reilly simply.

“So he’ll be extra glad to welcome your husband as a neighbour,” went on Norah, in her pleasant voice. “Now, the question is, how to get you home.”

“I declare, I’d forgotten home,” said Mrs. Reilly, waking to her surroundings with a start. “Six weeks I’ve been here, Miss, an’ yourself is the first woman to say a word to me—an’ then you talked about the Rosses! Well, indeed, it’s a treat I’ve had—an’ all along of the yalla horse! Could you tell me now, Miss, the nearest way home—it’s the place that was Duncan’s, past Four-Cross-Roads. ’Tis walkin’ it Mary-Kate and I must be, for I’ll not again trust meself in that quare little car.”

Norah laughed.

“Well, the yellow horse seems quiet enough now, Mrs. Reilly. I don’t think he’ll do any more bolting.”

“There’s no knowin’,” said Mrs. Reilly darkly. “Whin he started before he was goin’ along as kind and confidential as possible. I was just after sayin’ to Mary-Kate that I’d been mistaken in the look of his eye.”

“I wonder what set him off,” Norah pondered. “A motor-cycle?”

“Oh, no, he’s bruk to them,” said Mrs. Reilly. “No, ’twas the new milk-can I’d bought, bad luck to it: I’d tied it on behind the car, an’ it started rattling—I suppose ’twas workin’ loose it was. I was just thinkin’ of pullin’ him up, the way I could get down an’ have a look at it, when bang! it went, down on the ground. An’ the little horse stretched out his nose and bolted!”

“Then you’ve lost your milk-can, too?” said Norah sympathetically. Milk-cans were serious items in a settler’s outfit.

“I have, an’ I dunno what’ll Dan be sayin’ about it, at all. He was terrible set on havin’ that new can.”

“ ’Tis all I wish we’d lost it sooner,” said Mary-Kate. “ ’Twas the way the rope held for a bit; an’ the can came along behind us, boundin’ in the air, an’ rattlin’ furious. That was what annoyed the yalla horse. I wouldn’t blame him.”

“I wouldn’t, either,” Norah said, laughing. “Then, I suppose, the rope broke?”

“It did, Miss, an’ there was great quietness entirely. But the little horse was that annoyed by that time, I dunno did he notice the can had stopped or not. He didn’t stop, anyhow,” said Mary-Kate with a grin.

“Well, you really can’t blame him, Mrs. Reilly,” Norah said. “Any horse would have bolted. And he looks now as if he hadn’t a thought in the world but sleep. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll drive him up and down the lane, and if he goes quietly you can get in and I will drive you home.”

“I’ll not risk your neck, Miss, when I’m scared of my own,” said Mrs. Reilly firmly.

“I don’t think there’s any risk,” Norah said, smiling. She walked over to the yellow horse and patted his nose: and he opened one eye and looked at her sleepily, shutting it again at once. Norah gathered up the reins and jumped into the sulky, despite agonized protests from Mrs. Reilly. The yellow horse still slumbered: in fact, he had to be touched with the whip to make him realize that life was not all a dream. Then he submitted to being turned round and trotted up the lane, but without enthusiasm. The yellow horse was not in the bloom of youth, and he had galloped several miles with a sulky behind him. He longed only for rest.

Norah turned him round presently and drove back to where Mary-Kate and her mother waited uncertainly.

“See, he’s as quiet as possible, Mrs. Reilly. That long gallop has taken every bit of mischief out of him. I’ll drive you home.”

“But your horse. Miss?” queried Mrs. Reilly, relieved but doubtful.

“If you’ll lead him he’ll follow like a lamb,” Norah answered. “He’s perfectly gentle. Do you think you could lead him across to me, and I’ll hold him while you get in.”

Mary-Kate was off like a flash, the mother watching her nervously.

“Is it all right, Miss?”

“Quite all right,” Norah smiled. “He has had a long gallop himself, and he feels as lazy as your horse. See how quietly he’s coming.”

Mary-Kate returned in triumph, leading Garryowen, who seemed to realize that good manners were expected of him. She handed his bridle to Norah and hopped into the sulky, turning a beseeching face upward.

“Could I lead him, ma’am? I—I do like the feel of leading him.”

“Yes, if your mother says so,” Norah answered, smiling.

“May I, Mother? Say I may!”

“I dunno is it safe for you,” Mrs. Reilly said.

“But he follows beautifully, Mrs. Reilly,” Norah said. “Hold him loosely, Mary-Kate, so that you would let him go easily if anything made him pull back. Only, nothing will.”

“Is it to let him go?” Mary-Kate demanded. “I’d not do that!”

“But you’d have to, if he pulled back—unless you went too,” Norah laughed. “If he really wanted to go none of us could hold him. But he’ll be all right, you’ll see.”

“Then is it orders, ma’am, to hold him loosely?” demanded Mary-Kate unwillingly.

“Orders?” Norah looked doubtful, and little Mrs. Reilly smiled.

“ ’Tis what her father says, Miss,” she explained. “Some things he’ll let her have her way about, for he’s an aisy-going man with a child. But if he says a thing is ‘orders’—then there’s no more argument about it, and she knows it.”

“Oh, I see,” said Norah, laughing. “Well, yes—it’s orders, Mary-Kate, or I can’t trust you with him. Now won’t you get in, Mrs. Reilly? I’m sure your husband will be wondering where you are. I’ll truly promise to take you safely home.”

Thus entreated, Mrs. Reilly got in as nimbly as Mary-Kate, and the yellow horse, responding unwillingly to a gentle touch of the whip, set off again. It was evident that no more undue energy was left in him: he went with a gloomy reluctance that said clearly that not a whole battalion of rattling milk-cans would induce him to bolt again. Mrs. Reilly clutched the arm of the seat nervously at first: then, deciding that caution was unnecessary, she let go, and lost her expression of extreme anxiety. Mary-Kate had no room for any nervousness. She had twisted her small body half round, and was regarding Garryowen with complete happiness; while Garryowen, on his part, probably wondered why he was condemned to jog-trot at the heels of a sulky drawn by such a very inferior beast, whom his mistress had, for some unaccountable reason, elected to drive when she might have been riding homewards on Garryowen himself.

“And you live hereabouts, Miss?” Mrs. Reilly inquired presently, when it seemed certain that the yellow horse did not mean to bolt.

“Our place is Billabong—about five miles from yours,” Norah said. “It’s one of the old places here. My brother and I were born there. You must come and see us, Mrs. Reilly—you’d love our old housekeeper, Brownie. She’s really Mrs. Brown, but every one calls her Brownie. I was only a baby when my mother died, and she has always looked after me. Brownie’s a good hand at looking after anyone.”

“I’d be proud to come, Miss,” Mrs. Reilly answered. “It’s terrible lonesome out here.”

“Haven’t you any neighbours?”

“There’s a few men, livin’ here and there, that me husband has met. But I don’t think there’s a woman nearer than Four-Cross-Roads; an’ that’s only three or four houses. An’ no one has been near me.”

“How long have you been out?”

“Two months, Miss, since we landed. Indeed, there do be times that it seems more.”

“I don’t wonder, you poor soul,” said Norah warmly. “But you’ll find nice women once you get to know them, Mrs. Reilly. Mrs. Gardiner is one—she lives not far from where the yellow horse tried to take you; and there is Mrs. Scott at Four-Cross-Roads, where the school-teacher, Miss Wright, lives—you’ll like her, Mary-Kate, she’s such a jolly girl. And your nearest neighbour is Mrs. Tulloch, I suppose: she’s a good soul, too. They’re really not meaning to be unkind, only they’re all very busy, and they don’t quite realize how lonely a new-comer is.”

“If they did, they couldn’t keep away,” said Mrs. Reilly bitterly. “You’d not know the meaning of loneliness, Miss, till you found yoursilf in a new country, an’ never a woman to hold out her hand to you. An’ I didn’t know how the childer’d treat Mary-Kate here, so I’ve kept off sending her to school—but I know she’ll have to go.”

“Well, you needn’t worry about that,” Norah said briskly. “I’ll see Miss Wright, and I’ll make sure that Mary-Kate will get a welcome if you send her.”

“They told us on the ship that we’d be called ‘Pommies,’ an’ no one’d be friends with us,” Mrs. Reilly said. “I dunno, at all, what a ‘Pommy’ is, but I never heard tell that I was one. Isn’t it true, Miss?”

Norah flicked the yellow horse reflectively.

“There are silly people everywhere, Mrs. Reilly,” she said, “and some of the women in the cities and the little townships aren’t friendly to new-comers. But out in the country we know too well how lonely it is, and people are glad enough of new neighbours. All the women about here are sensible—they’re all the wives of hard-working farmers, and if they are a bit slow in making friends, once they do know you, you can always depend on them. Why, it would be too silly if we didn’t welcome British people out here—weren’t most of our grandfathers and grandmothers emigrants themselves?”

“I’m told they forget that, Miss.”

“The sensible ones don’t,” Norah said warmly. “My grandfather was an Englishman and my mother was Irish; and though I’m proud of being an Australian, I’m prouder of them, because there wouldn’t have been any Australia but for the people who had the pluck to come out here. Don’t you worry, Mrs. Reilly: I’ll see that you find friends.” She turned to the little woman suddenly, her face breaking into a smile. “Why, I believe it must be you my friend Miss Rainham was speaking about to me, only this afternoon: she told me there was a new-comer out in this direction, and she wants to come and see you. We agreed to go together. Won’t she be surprised when she hears I’ve made friends with you already! Only she thought you were English.”

“Ah, well,” said Mrs. Reilly tolerantly, “I’d not blame her for that—how would she know, at all? Indeed, Miss, I’d be real proud to see any friend of yours. An’ I’d be more than grateful to have you speak to the lady at the school. Dan’s after saying to me we must send Mary-Kate next week.”

“It will be all right for her, Mrs. Reilly. You want to go, Mary-Kate, don’t you?”

“I do,” said Mary-Kate firmly. “I’d like fine to know the sort of games them children do be playing in this country. An’ if they call me a Pommy I’ll teach ’em manners, so I will. If ’tis a Pommy I am, then I’m the sort of Pommy that can hit hard!”

“Don’t be talkin’ like that,” said her mother. “What’ll Miss Linton think of you, at all? You’re to go to school to learn to have behaviour, not to fight.” To which Mary-Kate made no reply. But in her eye gleamed, unsubdued, the light of battle.

“That is your gate, isn’t it, Mrs. Reilly?” Norah asked, pointing with her whip to a battered white gate ahead.

“It is, Miss. An’ there’s himself waitin’ for us!” Mrs. Reilly’s face fell as she saw a tall man at the gate, looking anxiously up the track.

“I suppose he has been pretty anxious,” Norah said. “Oh, well, he’ll be so glad to see you safely home, he won’t think about the milk-can. And most likely you’ll get it back, Mrs. Reilly. Do you remember where it dropped off?”

“I do. ’Twas near the little bridge over the river after you pass a pair of big white gates. That’s where the rope bruk.”

“Oh, yes—that’s Harkness’s. I’ll telephone to them when I get home and ask them to look for it. No one will have taken it, I’m sure.”

“I dunno will it be anny good, Miss,” Mrs. Reilly said. “You’d not say so, with the unmerciful banging it had, draggin’ behind the little car.”

“Oh, milk-cans are tough. They have to be, to stand the way the porters at the stations fling them about,” Norah laughed. “Anyhow, don’t worry until you know for certain: I’m sure Sergeant-Major Reilly would say so.”

She handed over her charges to the soldierly man by the gate, leaving his women-folk to explain matters to him.

“Good-night, Mrs. Reilly. I won’t forget to telephone about the can: and Miss Rainham and I will be over very soon. And I’ll see Miss Wright. Thanks so much for leading Garryowen, Mary-Kate.”

“But I—I loved it!” said Mary-Kate, her small face flushing.

“You must have a ride when you come over to Billabong,” Norah told her.

“Is it me?” said Mary-Kate faintly, in ecstasy.

“Rather! Good-night, everybody—I must hurry home.” She swung herself into the saddle, the bewildered ex-sergeant-major rushing forward just too late to hold her stirrup. The long road stretched before her, lonely in the darkening twilight: she gave Garryowen his head, and he went off at a hand-gallop, glad to escape from jogging in the dusty wake of the yellow horse. The wind seemed to spring to meet them, roaring in her ears. Norah settled her hat firmly, giving herself up to the joy of that perfect gallop, and the miles fled by under Garryowen’s eager hoofs.