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In the same instant the squaw arose, dashed the long hair not only from her eyes but from her head, tore away her shawl and blanket, and revealed the square shoulders of Lance Harriott! Flip remained leaning against the door; but the young man in rising dropped the bandaged papoose, which rolled from his lap into the fire.
To Ellen Harriott the arrival was a new excitement, a change in the monotony of bush life; but to the old lady and Hugh it meant a great deal more. It meant that they would be no longer master and mistress of the big station on which they had lived so long, and which was now so much under their control that it seemed almost like their own. Everything depended on what the girl was like.
Such was Kuryong homestead, where lived Charlie Gordon's mother and his brother Hugh, with a lot of children left by another brother who, like many others, had gone up to Queensland to make his fortune, and had left his bones there instead; and to look after these young folk there was a governess, Miss Harriott. The spring the glorious hill-country spring was down on Kuryong.
She'll be there before we can possibly get down. If no one meets her I wonder if she'll have pluck enough to get into the coach and come on to Donohoe's." "I don't envy her the trip, if she does," said Miss Harriott. "The coach-drive over those roads will seem awful to an English girl." "I'll have to go down at once, anyhow," said Hugh, "and meet her on the road somewhere.
Then there was a splash, a grunt, a sudden dispersion of animated nature, and the head of Mr. Lance Harriott appeared above the bank. It was a startling transformation.
And feeling that if not "on with the new love," he was, at any rate, satisfactorily "off with the old," Blake drove his spanking ponies off to Tarrong, while Ellen Harriott went about her household work with a face as inscrutable and calm as though no stone had ruffled the mill-pond of her existence. For the next couple of weeks, affairs at Kuryong flowed on in usual station style.
After they had gone, Ellen Harriott and Blake were left alone in the breakfast-room. Outside, the heedless horse-boy was harnessing Blake's ponies; but inside no one but themselves was awake, and as he finished his breakfast, Ellen stepped up to the table and blew out the two candles, leaving the room in semi-darkness. She caught his hand, and he drew her to him.
The letter that he took out of it was a strange jewel to repose in so rude a casket. It also was from Kuryong from Ellen Harriott, who had taken the precaution of addressing it in a feigned hand so that the postmaster and postmistress at Kiley's Crossing, who handled all station letters, would not know that she was corresponding with Blake. The letter was a great contrast to Mrs. Gordon's.
He threw himself on the couch in the inner room, and before long a titanic snore showed that he had not over-rated his sleeping powers. Ellen Harriott sat by Red Mick's bedside and thought over the events of the last few weeks. As she thought she half-dozed, but woke with a start to find her patient broad awake again and trying to get at something that was under his bunk.
Like an arrow from the bow the young fellow sent his big thoroughbred horse across the paddocks, making a bee line over fences and everything for Tarrong, while Ellen Harriott hurried in to pack up a few things. "Can I help you at all?" said Carew, following her into the house. I'd like to be some use, don't you know; but in this country I seem to be so dashed useless.
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