"It's all right," he said; "go inside and shut the gate. I'll give him what for. I'd just like to see him touch you. I'd knock him into next year as soon as look at him."
Cyril put his hands in his pockets and strutted towards the track through the bush--to the intense admiration of Elizabeth.
"No Bruce is afraid of any one," he said. "You and Nancy go in."
A girl in a short long print dress ran down the verandah steps. A mane of golden hair hung down her back and some of it lay over her shoulders, and when she stood still she tossed it away.
"You're to come home at once, Betty," she said, "and mind baby. And oh, you naughty girl, you've got your boots and stockings off again. What _will_ mother say?"
Betty's boots and stockings were on once more, and her school frock exchanged for one whose school days lay far behind it. In spite of "lettings down" and repeated patchings and mendings it was in what its small wearer called the "ragetty tagetty" stage of its existence, and was donned only when she was about the dirty part of "cleaning up."
It was Saturday morning now, and she was very busy. Her mother could never capably wield a broom, or scrub, or dust, or cook--she had done all four, but the results were pathetic. Even Nancy knew the story of her life, which began with "once upon a time, almost twenty years ago," and was told in varying fragments whenever a story was begged for.
There was the story of the jolly sea-captain and his one wee daughter--their own mother--and of how they had sailed the seas and seen many people and many lands. There was the story of the old house within the iron gates--built by convicts more than fifty years ago--and of how the sea-captain had bought it and built a tower and spiral staircase and a roof promenade, which he called his "deck." And of how he and his small daughter settled down in the great house together; and how her wardrobe was always full of beautiful clothes and her purse full of real sovereigns; and two ponies she had to her name, and a great dog that was the terror of the neighbourhood, and a little dog that lived as much as it could in her lap. There was the story of her garden full of rare flowers, and her ferneries of rare ferns, and her aviary of rare birds.