“The excitement keeps him alive.”
“There’s plenty on a station to keep a man alive in that way at all times.”
“And plenty to keep ladies alive too?”
“Oh! ladies? I don’t know that ladies have any business in the bush. Harry’s trouble is all about my sister and the children and me. He wouldn’t care a straw for himself.”
“Do you think he’d be better without a wife?”
Kate hesitated for a moment. “Well, no. I suppose it would be very rough without Mary; and he’d be so lonely when he came in.”
“And nobody to make his tea.”
“Or to look after his things,” said Kate, earnestly; “I know it was very rough before we came here. He says that himself. There were no regular meals, but just food in a cupboard when he chose to get it.”
“That is not comfortable, certainly.”
“Horrid, I should think. I suppose it is better for him to be married. You’ve got your mother, Mr. Medlicot.”
“Yes; I’ve got my mother.”
“That makes a difference, does it not?”
“A very great difference. She’ll save me from having to go to a cupboard for my bread and meat.”
“I suppose having a woman about is better for a man. They haven’t got anything else to do, and therefore they can look to things.”
“Do you help to look to things?”
“I suppose I do something. I often feel ashamed to think how very little it is. As for that, I’m not wanted at all.”
“So that you’re free to go elsewhere?”
“I didn’t mean that, Mr. Medlicot; only I know I’m not of much use.”
“But if you had a house of your own?”
“Gangoil is my home just as much as it is Mary’s; and I sometimes feel that Harry is just as good to me as he is to Mary.”
“Your sister will never leave Gangoil.”
“Not unless Harry gets another station.”
“But you will have to be transplanted some day.”
Kate merely chucked up her head and pouted her lips, as though to show that the proposition was one which did not deserve an answer.
“You’ll marry a squatter, of course, Miss Daly?”
“I don’t suppose I shall ever marry anybody, Mr. Medlicot.”
“You wouldn’t marry anyone but a squatter? I can quite understand that. The squatters here are what the lords and the country gentlemen are at home.”
“I can’t even picture to myself what sort of life people live at home.”
Both Medlicot and Kate Daly meant England when they spoke of home.
“There isn’t so much difference as people think. Classes hang together just in the same way; only I think there’s a little more exclusiveness here than there was there.”
In answer to this, Kate asserted with innocent eagerness that she was not at all exclusive, and that if ever she married anyone she’d marry the man she liked.
“I wish you’d like me,” said Medlicot.
“That’s nonsense,” said Kate, in a low, timid whisper, hurrying away to rejoin the other ladies. She could speculate on the delights of the beverage as would Mickey O’Dowd in his hut; but when it was first brought to her lips she could only fly away from it. In this respect Mickey O’Dowd was the more sensible of the two.
No other word was spoken that night between them, but Kate lay awake till morning thinking of the one word that had been spoken. But the secret was kept sacredly within her own bosom.
Before the Medlicots started that night the old lady made a proposition that the Heathcotes and Miss Daly should eat the Christmas dinner at Medlicot’s Mill. Mrs. Heathcote, thinking perhaps of her sister, thoroughly liking what she herself had seen of the Medlicots, looked anxiously into Harry’s face. If he would consent to this, an intimacy would follow, and probably a real friendship be made.
“It’s out of the question,” he said. The very firmness, however, with which he spoke gave a certain cordiality even to his refusal.
“I must be at home, so that the men may know where to find me till I go out for the night.” Then, after a pause, he continued, “As we can’t go to you, why should you not come to us?”
So it was at last decided, much to Harry’s own astonishment, much to his wife’s delight. Kate, therefore, when she lay awake, thinking of the one word that had been spoken, knew that there would be an opportunity for another word.
Medlicot drove his mother home safely, and, after he had taken her into the house, encountered Nokes on his return from Boolabong, as has been told at the close of the last chapter.
VIII
“I Do Wish He Would Come!”
On the Monday morning Harry came home as usual, and, as usual, went to bed after his breakfast. “I wouldn’t care about the heat if it were not for the wind,” he said to his wife, as he threw himself down.
“The wind carries it so, I suppose.”
“Yes; and it comes from just the wrong side—from the northwest. There have been half a dozen fires about today.”
“During the night, you mean?”
“No; yesterday—Sunday. I can not make out whether they come by themselves. They certainly are not all made by incendiaries.”
“Accidents, perhaps?”
“Well, yes. Somebody drops a match, and the sun ignites it. But the chances are much against a fire like that spreading. Care is wanted to make it spread. As far as I can learn, the worst fires have not been just after midday, when, of course, the heat is greater, but in the early night, before the dews have come. All the same, I feel that I know nothing about it—nothing at all. Don’t let me sleep long.”
In spite of this injunction, Mrs. Heathcote determined that he should sleep all day if he would. Even the nights were fearfully hot and sultry, and on this Monday morning he had come home much fatigued. He would be out again at sunset, and now he should have what rest nature would
