He had sensed this clearly enough. And it was this that made Aunt Matilda a bit spiteful against her, when she said that Mary was "heavy" and wouldn't easily get a man.
But there was also the queer black look in Mary's eyes, that was outside her conceit and her social importance. The queer, almost animal dark glisten, that was full of fear and wonder, and vulnerability. Like the look in the eyes of a caught wild animal. Or the look in the shining black eyes of one of the aborigines, especially the black woman looking askance in a sort of terror at a white man, as if a white man was a sort of devil that might possess her.
Where had Mary got that queer aboriginal look, she the granddaughter of an English earl?
"Y're real lively to-day, aintcher, Jack? Got a hundred quid for your birthday, and my, some talk!"
"Comes to that," said Jack, rousing himself with difficulty. "We've come fifteen or twenty miles without you opening your mouth either."
Tom laughed shortly and relapsed into silence.
"Well," he said, "let's wake up now, there's the outlying paddock." He pointed with his whip.--"And there's the house through the dip in the valley!" Then suddenly in a queer tone: "Say, matey, don't it look lovely from here, with all that afternoon sun falling over it like snow . . . You think I've never seen snow: but I have, in my dream."
Jack's heart contracted as he jumped down to open the first gate. For him too, the strange fulness of the yellow afternoon light was always unearthly, at Wandoo. But the day was still early, just after dinner-time, for they had stayed the night half way.
"So it does! All" replied Tom. "Mr. George says Ma done wonders. Made it pay hand over fist. Y'remember that fellow, Pink-eye Percy, what come from Queensland, and had studied agriculture an' was supposed to be a bad egg an' all that? At that 'roo hunt, you remember? Well, he bought land next to Wandoo, off-side from the Reds. An' Ma sortta broke wi' the Reds over something, an' went in wi' him, an't' seems they was able to do wonders. Anyway Old George says Ma's been able to buy a little place near her own old home in Beverley, to go to.--But seems to me--"
"Funny how little anyone tells you, Jack."
"I felt I couldn't get to th' bottom of what old George was tellin' me. I took no notice then. But it seems funny now. An' I say--"