Seven Little Australians Part 21

But he doubled his little cold fists, fought himself free, and yelled for Esther.

Mr. Ha.s.sal had emptied the buggies by now, and came up the steps himself.

"Aren't you going to give them some breakfast, little mother?" he said, and the old lady nearly dropped her grandson in her distress.

"Dear, dear!" she said. "Well, well! Just to think of it! But it makes one forget."

In ten minutes they were all in dry things, sitting in the warm dining-room and making prodigious breakfasts.

"WASN'T I hungry!" Bunty said. His mouth was full of toast, and he was slicing the top off his fourth egg and keeping an eye on a dish that held honey in one compartment and clotted cream in another.

"The dear old plates!" Esther picked hers up after she had emptied it and looked lovingly at the blue roses depicted upon it. "And to think last time l ate off one I--"

"Was a little bride with the veil pushed back from your face," the old lady said, "and everyone watching you cut the cake. Only two have broken since--oh yes, Hannah, the girl who came after Emily, chipped off the handle of the sugar-basin and broke a bit out of the slop-bowl."

"Where did Father stand?" Meg asked. She was peopling the room with wedding guests; the ham and the chops, the toast and eggs and dishes of fruit, had turned to a great white towered cake with silver leaves.

"Just up there where Pip is sitting," Mrs. Ha.s.sal said, "and he was helping Esther with the cake, because she was cutting it with his sword. Such a hole you made in the table-cloth, Esther, my very best damask one with the convolvulus leaves, but, of course, I've darned it--dear, dear!"

Baby had upset her coffee all over herself and her plate and Bunty, who was next door.

She burst into tears of weariness and nervousness at the new people, and slipped off her chair under the table. Meg picked her up.

"May I put her to bed?" she said; "she is about worn out."

"Me, too," Nellie said, laying down her half-eaten scone and pushing back her chair. "Oh, I am so tired!"

"So'm I." Bunty finished up everything on his plate in choking haste and stood up. "And that horrid coffee's running into my boots."

So just as the sun began to smile and chase away the sky's heavy tears, they all went to bed again to make up for the broken night, and it was: six o'clock and tea-time before any of them opened their eyes again.

CHAPTER XVI

Yarrahappini

Yarrahappini in the sunshine, the kind of sunshine that pushes the thermometer's silver thread up to 100 deg.!

Right away in the distance on three sides was a blue hill line and blue soft trees.

And up near the house the trees were green and beautiful, and the flowers a blaze of colour.

But all the stretching plain between was brown. Brown burnt gra.s.s with occasional patches of dull green, criss-crossed here and there with fences; that ran up the little hills that in places broke the plain's straight line, and disappeared in the dips where rank gra.s.s and bracken flourished. The head station consisted of quite a little community of cottages on the top of a hill. Years ago, when Esther was no bigger than her own little General, there had been only a rough, red weather-board place on the hill-top, and a bark but or two for outhouses.

And Mr. Ha.s.sal had been in the saddle from morning to night, and worked harder than any two of his own stockmen, and Mrs. Ha.s.sal had laid aside her girlish accomplishments, her fancy work, her guitar, her water-colours, and had scrubbed and cooked and washed as many a settler's wife has done before, until the anxiously watched wool market had brought them better days.

Then a big stone cottage reared itself slowly right in front of the little old place with its bottle-bordered garden plot, where nothing more aristocratic than pig's face and scarlet geranium had ever grown.

A beautiful cottage it was, with its plenitude of lofty rooms, its many windows, and its deep veranda. The little home was kitchen and bedrooms for the two women servants now, and was joined to the big place by a covered way.

A hundred yards away there was a two-roomed cottage that was occupied by the son of an English baronet, who, for the consideration of seventy pounds a year and rations kept the Yarrahappini business books and gave out the stores.

Farther still, two bark humpies stood, back to back. Tettawonga, a bent old black fellow, lived in one, and did little else than smoke and give his opinion on the weather every morning.

Twenty years ago he had helped to make a steady foundation for the red cottage that had arrived ready built on a bullock-dray.

Fifteen years ago he had killed with his tomahawk one of two bushrangers who were trying to pick up Yarrahappini in the absence of his master, and he had carried little trembling Mrs. Ha.s.sal and tiny Esther to place of safety, and gone back and dealt the other one a blow on the head that stunned him till a.s.sistance came.

So, of course, he had earned his right to the cottage and the daily rations and the pipe that never stirred from his lips.

Two of the station hands lived in the other cottage when they were not out in distant parts of the run.

Close to the house was a long weather-board building with a heavy, padlocked door.

"Oh, let's go in," Nell said, attracted by the size of the padlock; "it looks like a treasure-house in a book--mayn't we go in, please, little grandma?"

They were exploring all the buildings--the six children in a body, Mrs. Ha.s.sal, whom they all called "little grandma," much to her pleasure, and Esther with the boy.

"You must go and ask Mr. Gillet," the old lady said; "he keeps the keys of the stores. See, over in that cottage near the tank, and speak nicely, children, please."

"Such a gentleman," she said in a low tone to Esther, "so clever, so polished, if only he did not drink so."

Meg and Judy went, with Baby hurrying after them as fast as her short legs would allow.

"Come in," a voice said, when they knocked. Meg hesitated nervously, and a man opened the door. Such a great, gaunt man, with restless, unhappy eyes, a brown, wide brow, and neatly trimmed beard.

Judy stated that Mrs. Ha.s.sal had sent them for the keys, if he had no objection.

He asked them to come in and sit down while he looked for them.

Meg was surprised at the room, as her blue eyes plainly showed, for she had only heard him spoken of as the store-keeper. There were bookshelves, on which she saw Shakespeare and Browning and Sh.e.l.ley and Rossetti and Tennyson, William Morris, and many others she had never seen before. There were neatly framed photographs and engravings of English and Continental scenery on the walls. There was a little chased silver vase on a bracket, and some of the flowers from the pa.s.sion vines in it. The table with the remains of breakfast on it was as nice on a small scale as the one she had just left in the big cottage.

He came back froth the inner room with the keys. "I was afraid I had mislaid then," he said; "the middle one opens the padlock, Miss Woolcot; the bra.s.s fat one is for the two bins, and the long steel one for the cupboard."

"Thank you so much. I'm afraid we disturbed you in the middle of your breakfast," Meg said, standing up and blushing because she thought he had noticed her surprise at the bookshelves.

He disclaimed the trouble, and held the door open for them with a bow that had something courtly in it, at least so Meg thought, puzzling how it came to be a.s.sociated with salt beef by the hundredweight and bins of flour. He watched them go over the gra.s.s--at least he watched Meg in her cool, summer muslin and pale-blue belt, Meg in her shady chip hat, with the shining fluffy plait hanging to her waist.

Judy's long black legs and crumpled cambric had no element of the picturesque in them.

Mrs. Ha.s.sal unfastened the padlock of the store-room. Such a chorus of "ohs!" and "ahs!" there was from the children!

Baby had never seen so much sugar together in her life before; she looked as if she would have liked to have been let loose in the great bin for an hour or two.

And the currants! There was a big wooden box brim full--about forty pounds, Mrs. Ha.s.sal thought when questioned.