Hugh laughed. "I expect Kiley's River will get you yet, Patsy," he
said. "Go in now to the kitchen and get dry by the fire. I'll lend
you a horse to get back on to-morrow. You can camp here till then,
there's no hurry back."
The boy let his horse go loose, dismissing it with a parting whack
on the rump with the bridle, and swaggered inside, carrying his
saddle, to show his wet clothes and recount his deeds to the admiring
cook. Patsy was not one to hide his light under a bushel.
Hugh carried the bag into the office, and shook out the letters
and papers on the table. Everything was permeated with a smell of
wet leather, and some of the newspapers were rather pulpy. After
sending out everybody else's mail he turned to examine his own.
Out of the mass of letters, agents' circulars, notices of sheep
for sale, catalogues of city firms, and circulars from pastoral
societies, he picked a letter addressed to himself in the scrawling
fist of William Grant. He opened it, expecting to find in it the
usual Commination Service on things in general, but as he read on,
a vivid surprise spread over his face. Leaving the other letters
and papers unopened, he walked to the door and looked out into
the courtyard, where Stuffer, the youngest of his nephews, who was
too small to be allowed to join in the field sports of the others,
was playing at being a railway train. He had travelled in a train
once, and now passed Hugh's door under easy steam, working his
arms and legs like piston-rods, and giving piercing imitations of
a steam-whistle at intervals.
"Stuffer," said Hugh, "do you know where your grandmother is?"
"No" said the Stuffer laconically. "I don't Choo, choo, choo,
Whee-aw!"
"Well, look here," said Hugh, "you just railway-train yourself round
the house till you find her, and let me know where she is. I want
to see her. Off you go now."
The Stuffer steamed himself out with the action of an engine drawing
a long train of cars, and disappeared round the corner of the house.
Before long he was back, drew himself up alongside an imaginary
platform, intimated that his grandmother was in the verandah, and
then proceeded to let the steam hiss out of his safety-valve.
Hugh walked across the quadrangle, under the acacia tree, heavy with
blossoms, in which a myriad bees were droning at their work, and
through the house on to the front verandah, which looked over the
wide sweep of river-flat. Here he found his mother and Miss Harriott,
the governess, peeling apples for dumplings--great rosy-checked,
solid-fleshed apples, that the hill-country turns out in perfection.
The old lady was slight in figure, with a refined face, and a
carriage erect in spite of her years. Miss Harriott was of a languid
Spanish type, with black eyes and strongly-marked eyebrows. She
had a petite, but well-rounded figure, with curiously small hands
and feet. Though only about twenty-four years of age she had the sedate
and unemotional look that one sees in doctors and nurses---people
who have looked on death and birth, and sorrow and affliction. For
Ellen Harriott had done her three years' course as a nurse; she had
a natural faculty for the business, and was in great request among
the wild folk of the mountains, who looked upon her (and perhaps
rightly) as quite equal to the Tarrong doctor in any emergency. She
knew them all, for she had lived nearly all her life at Kuryong.
When the family moved there from the back country a tutor was needed
for the boys, and an old broken-down gentleman accepted the billet
at low pay, on condition that he was allowed to bring his little
daughter with him. When he died, the daughter still stayed on, and
was made governess to the new generation of young folk. She was a
queer, self-contained girl, saying little; and as Hugh walked in,
she looked up at him, and wondered what new trouble was bringing
him to his mother with the open letter in his hand.