No one in the dormitory said a word for a few minutes, and Margot began to brush her hair steadily.
“I’d have ... bought that horse,” said Josy. “I bet its owner had been unkind to it.”
“He hadn’t. No, he hadn’t. He was quite kind, but he didn’t understand--that’s what Long Jake said afterwards--that the horse was missing its old master who had died, and that it was feeling unhappy because of that,” said Margot. “I dare say the horse has grown fond of him by now.”
“But however did Long Jake find it out?” burst in Stella doubtfully.
“The horse told him, I suppose.” Margot spoke quietly. “You see, it’s all very well to say that gipsies tell lies. Perhaps they do. But it was one of the old Bush people--the ‘blacks,’ they call them out there--who taught Long Jake how to whisper to the horses. Long Jake said that, compared to _them_, he knew nothing about it, really. It was ... because they loved horses that they could do it, Long Jake said; and it was only, I suppose, because he felt so horribly sorry for the horse that he simply had to try to see what he could do. The ‘blacks’ know much more than that, too. They know all sorts of woodcraft secrets about tracking and trailing, things you wouldn’t understand here in schools.” Margot broke off.
“Well, did Long Jake learn about them?” inquired Stella.
“Yes, the ‘blacks’ taught him a lot. He beat out a fire once, that had got started in the scrub in the hot weather and might have meant awful damage--you see, the Bush was so near. He had some method that the ‘blacks’ had taught him. And he knew a way of _making_ fires, too, that he’d learned from them. A big cane, pointed at one end, and with its point placed inside a hole made in another cane. Then he twirled the point round and round inside the hole; and smoke came, and then fire. He did that while we were camping, and it quite dazzled me--his quickness, I mean. But he said the ‘blacks’ could do it ten times quicker. Oh, and that time I was lost in the Bush. I’d have been fifty times more frightened if I hadn’t remembered something he’d told me. ‘Always bear to the left; and think of that and nothing else,’ he’d said. Well, I did; and I found my way back to the water-hole where we’d been camping. Only, of course, they’d left it to look for me. It was lovely to see them coming back!”