Sisters. Ada Cambridge

Keep that dark too, for mercy's sake! She is his ideal woman. It is for her sake he wants you to talk Wellwood with. If you spoil his pleasure with that hint of nut-crackers, I'll never forgive you."

      "I hope I know better," Guthrie smiled, coming to himself a little.

      "I am sure you do," said she, and turned from him to take her chair at table.

      "Then we'll bring him tomorrow," Alice said, seating herself.

      "This afternoon," said the visitor commandingly.

      Alice wanted another moonlight talk about the baby, and knew the small chance of getting it where Deborah Pennycuick was, and she raised obstacles, fighting for delay. Deborah calmly turned to Jim.

      "Anything to hinder your coming this afternoon, Jim?"

      "Nothing," said Mr. Urquhart promptly.

      The matter was evidently settled.

      They sat down to lunch, and the talk was brisk. It was almost confined to the visitor and Alice, although the former carefully avoided the shutting out of the hostess from the conversation, in which she was incapable of taking a brilliant part. Jim, in the host's place, sat dumb and still, except for his alertness in anticipating his guest's little wants. Guthrie Carey, on her other hand, was equally silent. Neither of the two men heard what she talked about for listening to the mere notes of her charming voice.

      After luncheon she put on her sensible straw hat.

      "You must drive Mr. Carey," she said to Jim. "I'll just ride ahead, and let them know you are coming."

      "Let us all go together," said Alice. "I'll drive Mr. Carey, and Jim can escort you."

      But there was no gainsaying Deborah Pennycuick when she had expressed her views.

      "You have to get ready," she pointed out, "and you'll do it quicker if I'm not here. Besides, I can't wait."

      They all went out with her to the gate, where her superb, high-tempered horse pawed the gravel, and champed upon his bit. Jim sent her springing to the saddle from his horny palm like a bird let out of it, and they watched in silence while she crossed two paddocks, leaped two sets of slip-rails, and disappeared as a small dot of white handkerchief from the sun-suffused landscape.

      "What riding!" Guthrie Carey ejaculated, under his breath.

      "She's the best horsewoman in the country," Jim Urquhart commented slowly, after a still pause.

      He was a slow—to some people a dull and heavy—man, who talked little, and less of Deborah Pennycuick than of any subject in the world—his world.

      "And what a howling beauty!" the sailor added, in the same whisper of awe.

      Again the bushman spoke, muttering deeply in his beard: "She is as good as she is beautiful."

      Mrs. Urquhart took her levelled hand from her eyes, and turned to contribute her testimony.

      "There, Mr. Carey, goes the flower of the Western District. You won't find her match amongst the best in England. I was with her mother when she was born—not a soul else—and put her into her first clothes, that I helped to make; and a bonny one she was, even then, with her black eyes, that stared up at me as much as to say: 'Who are you, I'd like to know?' Dear, it seems like yesterday, and it's nigh twenty years ago. All poor Sally Pennycuick's girls are good girls, and the youngest is going to be handsome too. Rose, the third, is not at all bad-looking; poor Mary—I don't know who she takes after. The father was the one with the good looks; but Sally was a fine woman too. Poor dear old Sally! I wish she was here to see that girl."

      Mrs. Urquhart and Mrs. Pennycuick, plain, brave, working women of the rough old times, wives of high-born husbands, incapable of companioning them as they companioned each other, had been great friends. On them had devolved the drudgery of the pioneer home-making without its romance; they had had, year in, year out, the task of 'shepherding' two headstrong and unthrifty men, who neither owned their help nor thanked them for it—the inglorious life-work of so many obscure women—and had strengthened each other's hands and hearts that had had so little other support.

      "Mrs. Pennycuick—she is not living, I presume?" Guthrie enticed the garrulous lady to proceed.

      "Dear, no. She died when Francie was a baby," and Mrs. Urquhart gave the details of her friend's last illness in full. "Deb was just a little trot of a thing—her father's idol; he wouldn't allow her mother to correct her the least bit, though she was a wilful puss, with a temper of her own; ruled the house, she did, just as she does now. If she hadn't had such a good heart, she'd have grown up unbearable. There never was a child in this world so spoiled. But spoiling's good for her, she says. It's to be hoped so, for spoiling she'll have to the end of the chapter. She's born to get the best of everything, is Debbie Pennycuick. Fortunately, her father's rich, though not so rich as he used to be; and when she leaves her beautiful home, it'll be to go to another as good, or better. She's got to marry well, that girl; she'd never get along as a poor woman, with her extravagant ways. It'd never do"—Mrs. Urquhart's voice had, subtly changed, and something in it made the blood rise to the cheeks of the listeners "it'd never do to put her into an ordinary bush-house, where often she couldn't get servants for love or money, because of the dull life, and might have to cook for station hands herself, and even do the washing at a pinch—"

      Jim wheeled round suddenly, and strode back to the house—the house, as he was quite aware, which his mother alluded to. She, agitated by the movement, and without completing her sentence, turned and trotted after him. Alice was left leaning over the gate, at Guthrie Carey's side.

      "You will enjoy this visit," she remarked calmly, ignoring the little scene. "Redford is a beautiful place—quite one of the show-places of the district—and they do things very well there. Mary is ostensibly the housekeeper; she really does all the hard work, but it is Deb who makes the house what it is. After she came home from school she got her father to build the new part. Since then they have had much more company than they used to have. Mary, who had been out for some years, didn't care for gaieties. She is a dear girl—we are all awfully fond of her—but she has a most curious complexion—quite bright red, as if her skin had something the matter with it, although it hasn't. Of course, that goes against her."

      "Miss Deborah's complexion is wonderful."

      "Yes. But oh, Deb isn't to be compared with Mary in anything except looks. She is eaten up with vanity—one can't be surprised—and is very dictatorial and overbearing; you could see that at lunch. But Mary is so gentle, so unselfish—her father's right hand, and everybody's stand-by."

      "I don't think Miss Deborah seemed—"

      "Because you don't know her. I do. She simply loathes children, while Mary would mother all the orphan asylums in the world, if she could. I always tell her that her mission in life is to run a creche—or should be. Lawks! How she will envy me when I get that boy of yours to look after!"

      Guthrie's feet seemed to take tight hold of the ground. "Really, Miss Urquhart—er—I can't thank you for your goodness in—in asking him up here—but I've been thinking—I've made up my mind that the best thing I can do is to take him home to my own people." The idea was an inspiration of the desperate moment. How to put it into practice he knew not, and she tried to show him that it was impracticable; but he stuck to it as to a life-buoy. He would write to his sister—all the 'people' he owned apparently—and find somebody who was going home; and "Isn't it time to be putting our things together? Miss Pennycuick told us we were to be there for tea at four o'clock, if possible."

      CHAPTER IV

       Table of Contents

      Behold him at Redford, with his tea-cup in his hand. He was safe now from talk about the baby; but he was also cut off from the lovely Deborah, now wandering about her extensive grounds with another young man. Old Father Pennycuick had him fast. They sat together under a verandah of the great house.