“And who is your ma, my dear? What’s your name?” continued her interrogator.
Laura replied politely; but there was a reserve in her manner which, together with the name she gave, told enough: the widow, Laura’s mother, had the reputation of being very “stuck-up,” and of bringing up her children in the same way.
The woman did not press Laura further; she whispered something behind her hand to Peter, then searching in her basket found a large, red apple, which she held out with an encouraging nod and smile.
“Here, my dear. Here’s something for you. Don’t cry any more, don’t now. It’ll be all right.”
Laura, who was well aware that she had not shed a tear since the couple entered the coach, coloured deeply, and made a movement, half shy, half unwilling, to put her hands behind her.
“Oh no, thank you,” she said in extreme embarrassment, not wishing to hurt the giver’s feelings. “Mother doesn’t care for us to take things from strangers.”
“Bless her soul!” cried the stout woman in amaze. “It’s only an apple! Now, my dear, just you take it, and make your mind easy. Your ma wouldn’t have nothin’ against it today, I’m sure o’ that—goin’ away so far and all so alone like this. It’s sweet and juicy.”
“It’s Melb’m you’ll be boun’ for I dessay?” said the yellow-haired Peter so suddenly that Laura started.
She confirmed this, and let her solemn eyes rest on him wondering why he was so red and fidgety and uncomfortable. The woman said: “Tch, tch, tch!” at the length of the journey Laura was undertaking, and Peter, growing still redder, volunteered another remark.
“I was nigh to bein’ in Melb’m once meself,” he said.
“Aye, and he can’t never forget it, the silly loon,” threw in the woman, but so good-naturedly that it was impossible, Laura felt, for Peter to take offence.
She gazed at the pair, speculating upon the relation they stood in to each other. She had obediently put out her hand for the apple, and now sat holding it, without attempting to eat it. It had not been Mother’s precepts alone that had weighed with her in declining it; she was mortified at the idea of being bribed, as it were, to be good, just as though she were Pin or one of the little boys. It was a punishment on her for having been so babyish as to cry; had she not been caught in the act, the woman would never have ventured to be so familiar. The very largeness and rosiness of the fruit made it hateful to her, and she turned over in her mind how she could get rid of it.
As the coach bumped along, her fellow-passengers sat back and shut their eyes. The road was shadeless; beneath the horses’ feet a thick red dust rose like smoke. The grass by the wayside, under the scattered gum trees or round the big black boulders that dotted the hillocks, was burnt to straw. In time, Laura also grew drowsy, and she was just falling into a doze when, with a jerk, the coach pulled up at the “Halfway House.” Here her companions alighted, and there were more nods and smiles from the woman.
“You eat it, my dear. I’m sure your ma won’t say nothin’,” was her last remark as she pushed the swing-door and vanished into the house, followed by Peter.
Then the driver’s pleasant face appeared at the window of the coach. In one hand he held a glass, in the other a bottle of lemonade.
“Here, little woman, have a drink. It’s warm work ridin’.”
Now this was quite different from the matter of the apple. Laura’s throat was parched with dust and tears. She accepted the offer gratefully, thinking as she drank how envious Pin would be, could she see her drinking bottle-lemonade.
Then the jolting and rumbling began anew. No one else got in, and when they had passed the only two landmarks she knew—the leprous Chinaman’s hut and the market garden of Ah Chow, who twice a week jaunted at a half-trot to the township with his hanging baskets, to supply people with vegetables—when they had passed these, Laura fell asleep. She wakened with a start to find that the coach had halted to apply the brakes, at the top of the precipitous hill that led down to the railway township. In a two-wheeled buggy this was an exciting descent; but the coach jammed on both its brakes, moved like a snail, and seemed hardly able to crawl.
At the foot of the hill the little town lay sluggish in the sun. Although it was close on midday, but few people were astir in the streets; for the place had long since ceased to be an important mining centre: the chief claims were worked out; and the coming of the railway had been powerless to give it the impetus to a new life. It was always like this in these streets of low, verandahed, redbrick houses, always dull and sleepy, and such animation as there was, was invariably to be found before the doors of the many public-houses.
At one of these the coach stopped and unloaded its goods, for an interminable time. People came and looked in at the window at Laura, and she was beginning to feel alarmed lest O’Donnell, who had gone inside, had forgotten all about her having to catch the train, when out he came, wiping his lips.
“Now for the livin’ luggage!” he said with a wink, and Laura drew back in confusion from the laughter of a group of larrikins round the door.
It was indeed high time at the station; no sooner was her box dislodged and her ticket taken than the train steamed in. O’Donnell recommended her to the guard’s care; she shook hands with him and thanked him, and had just been locked into a carriage by herself when he came running down the platform again, holding in his hand, for everyone to see, the apple, which Laura
