“Well,” said Hugh, a little awkwardly, “they are relations of Mr. Blake’s. You’ll see what an Australian farmer’s homestead is like.”
They drove through a rickety wire-and-sapling gate and across about a mile of bush, and suddenly came on a little slab house nestling under the side of a hill. At the back were the stockyards and the killing-pen, where a contrivance for raising dead cattle—called a gallows—waved its arms to the sky. In front of the house there was rather a nice little garden. At the back were a lot of dilapidated sheds, leaning in all directions. A mob of sheep was penned in a yard outside one of the sheds; and in the garden an old woman, white-haired and wrinkled, with a very short dress showing a lot of dirty stocking and slipshod elastic-sided boot, was bending over a spade, digging potatoes.
The old woman straightened herself as they drove up.
“Good daah to you, Misther Gordon,” she said. “Good daah to you, Miss.”
“Good day, Mrs. Doyle,” said Hugh. “Hard work that, this weather. How’s all the family?”
“Mag—Marg’rut, I mane—she’s inside. That’s her playin’ the pianny. She just got it up from Sydney.”
“Peter’s shearin’ the sheep. He’s in that shed there beyant. He’s the only shearer we have, so we tell him he’s the ringer of the shed. He works terr’ble hard, does Peter. He’s not—” and the old woman dropped her voice—“he’s not all there in the head, is Peter, you know.”
“Mick, bad scran to him! He’s bought a jumpin’ haarse (horse), and he’s gone to hell leppin! Down at one of the shows he is, some place. He has too much sense to work, has Mick. Won’t you come in and have a cup of tay?”
“No, we must get on, thank you,” and Hugh and Mary drove off, watched by the old lady and the lanky-legged, shock-headed youth—Peter himself—who came to the door of the big shed to stare at them.
As they drove off Hugh was silent, wondering what effect the sight of the selectors might have had on Miss Grant.
She seemed to read his thoughts, and after a little while she spoke.
“So those are Mr. Blake’s poor relations, are they? Well, that is not his fault. My father was poor once, just as poor as those people are. And Mr. Blake saved my life.”
Hugh felt that she was half-consciously putting him in the wrong for having more or less disapproved of Mr. Blake; so he kept silence.