“It’s the best place I know, anyhow,” said Tom Holmes, shaking hands all round, and bestowing a shy grin upon the twins. “And we’ll get rain some time or other, and then every one’ll have a few thumping seasons and forget the drought. I wish Dad would let me cut school and stay at home to help him: I’ll never do a bit of good at school, and I do love messing about at home.”
“Lazy young dog!” said his father cheerfully. “Another year’s lessons won’t hurt you.”
“Latin!” he said, with a resigned shrug. “And maths! I try to stick arithmetic, so’s I’ll be able to work out interest on mortgages”—he grinned at his father—“but I’m blessed if I can see the use of Euclid or Horace or Virgil on a cattle-station. I seem to spend half my time over Virgil, but I never learn a word that’ll be handy in a tight corner with bullocks!”
“Ah, that’s specialized knowledge, and comes later on,” said his father, laughing. “Come along, now, and gather up your luggage: we’ve got to have dinner at the hotel. Any use asking you and the girls to join us, John?”
“No, thanks; my wife will be looking out for us. I never can get the girls home quickly enough.” They said good-bye, and presently the twins were installed on the seat of the express-waggon, their father between them, while Billy perched on top of the heap of luggage at the back. Jo had the reins: it was an understood thing that she always drove when they came home. She wheeled the greys out of the crowded yard, dodging among motors, carts, and buggies, and in a few moments they were spinning along the dusty road towards home.
“Whew-w!” said Jean. “_Isn’t_ everything dry!”
The familiar landscape was dreary in its barrenness. Nothing green was visible, save the line of trees that marked the nearly dry bed of the creek. The paddocks were brown stretches, almost bare: little swirls of dust rose here and there as the hot breeze blew over them. They passed crops—sad little crops of oats that had come into ear while only about a foot high, and were now not worth the labour of cutting.
Scarcely any stock could be seen. A few dusty brown sheep picked up a scant living in the paddocks near the creek, and here and there were hungry-looking cows, only kept alive by hand-feeding, and apparently getting short rations of that. Everywhere dust lay thick: on the fences, on the dried-up grass by the roadside, on the dull green leaves of the hawthorn hedges past which they drove. It was clear that many weeks had gone by since a shower of rain had fallen to wash the all-covering dust away.