Chapter V: Two Months Later

ROBIN HURST came out upon the veranda of Hill Farm in the early dawn. It was an exquisite November morning. Mists were rising slowly from the gullies, revealing the tops of giant tree-ferns; above them, invisible in tree-tops still shrouded in white clouds, cockatoos shrieked a morning chorus. A pair of kookaburras perched on the gate-posts and looked wisely at Robin: they were old friends, christened Sally and Sam, so tame that they came regularly to find the scraps of raw meat that she left for them whenever meat occurred in the Hurst household—which was not every day. They preened their feathers, puffing them out until they looked ridiculously fat, the first sunbeams making them glint with a metallic blue and bronze. Then they broke into a wild duet of laughter. The echoes ran round the hills, “Ha-ha-ha! Hoo-hoo-hoo!” and were answered by other kookaburras beyond the creek. Robin put her head back and imitated the call—a proceeding that always puzzled and delighted Sally and Sam, who waited politely until she had finished, and then laughed as if it were the best joke in the world.

Robin waved her hand to the cheerful pair, and went off round the house—a workmanlike figure in blue shirt and khaki breeches, finished with home-made leggings of khaki cloth. From the first she had discarded skirts for country wear; and fortunately, Mrs. Hurst had put by a stock of breeches belonging to her husband, which her nimble fingers had altered to suit Robin’s requirements. The Jersey cow was waiting near the shed, where a shining bucket was up-ended on a rough bench, beside a three-legged stool. Robin petted her for a moment, and then sat down in the open to milk her—there was no need now to affront Bessy with the indignity of a bail. This done, she fed her, gave breakfast to Daisy, the calf, and to two small pigs that roamed at will in a tiny paddock; and, taking a hoe, went off to the vegetable garden.

Everything was very neat about the Hill Farm house. In front was a rambling old garden, ablaze with flowers. A trimly-cut lawn, shaded on the west by a row of Cootamundra wattles, took up much of the space; and there were winding walks and cool, quiet nooks where rustic seats invited you to sit down and rest, looking down the smooth green slopes towards the creek. Creeping plants and climbing roses made the wide verandas into bowers of scented bloom. Beyond the well-kept back yard came the vegetable garden, the pride of Robin’s heart.

Danny had dug the garden for Robin, refusing any payment. It was, indeed, difficult to exclude Danny from Hill Farm: the fact that he was supposed to be working for his father did not prevent him from appearing at odd moments, not at the house itself, but wherever any job waited that required extra muscle. Thus, Robin would find the cow-yard or pigsty swept and garnished: a heap of wood split and stacked, or a broken fence mended. “Aw, I just gotta spare hour an’ nothin’ to do in it,” Danny would say, bashfully. It was evident that he still looked on the Hursts as his responsibility.

Mrs. Hurst worried over the fact that it was impossible to make him take any money—the mere mention of which threw Danny into painful embarrassment. She consoled herself by knitting him socks, and by keeping on hand a stock of the brown gingerbread that never failed to delight him. Danny regarded himself as the guardian of the family, and would have been content with his position without either gingerbread or socks.

The vegetables stretched in neat rows, and, to Robin’s mind, represented unlimited wealth. The season had been kind to her: rain had come just when it was needed, and everything had flourished amazingly in the rich virgin soil. Long lines of potatoes were in flower: peas, beans, turnips, and all their brethren made a heartsome sight; and there was a little corner Robin loved, where thyme, sage, marjoram and parsley lent their old-world sweetness. Not a weed was to be seen anywhere. Daily the gardener made her way, hoe in hand, up and down each row; and in face of this martial pilgrimage no weed dared lift its head. Robin declared that her motto was, “A hoe in time saves nine.”

Already she had preparations in train for disposing of her crop. Baroin boasted a good greengrocer’s shop, and Robin had made friends with its proprietress, who had agreed to take a weekly supply of vegetables from her as soon as they were ready. Eggs and chickens were to be a side-line. In a netted pen a dozen cockerels fattened in happy ignorance of the advance of Christmas, while three or four broods of fluffy chicks roamed the hillside beside their fussy mothers, and young ducklings swam gaily in the creek. Robin yarded them all carefully every evening, for there were many foxes in the bush, a terror to every country poultry-yard.

The months since the death of her uncle had been, for her mother and herself, a time of absolute happiness. They were busy, but never oppressed with work. The house was much too large for them, but most of the rooms had been shut up, after undergoing a rigorous spring-cleaning. They slept on the veranda, and took most of their meals there; the bathroom served them as dressing-room, so that housework was reduced to its lowest possible terms, since there was no dust and no one to make the place disorderly. Together they worked in the garden, kept everything spick-and-span, and made a joke of each hour’s toil as it came. There was time for play, too: they fished in the creek for trout and blackfish, and took long walks over the hills, where many a rabbit fell to Robin’s gun.

The peaceful, happy life had wrought a great change in Mrs. Hurst. She looked years younger already: there was a new light in her eyes, a new energy in her movements. Colour had returned to her white face, and wrinkles had vanished. Robin was desperately proud of her. “When I make you wear breeches like me and have your hair shingled,” she declared, “everyone will think you’re my young sister!” To which Mrs. Hurst responded that she preferred the dignity of age.

The bell rang just as Robin reached the end of her last row of peas, and she fled to answer it with a haste that proclaimed hunger. When, after washing her hands, she appeared on the veranda, Mrs. Hurst was waiting for her. Robin attacked her porridge and cream ravenously.

“Isn’t it a good thing you brought me up not to take sugar with porridge?” she remarked. “Sugar costs a lot of money, and we can’t possibly grow it ourselves. The girls at school used to think me perfectly mad when I said they turned their porridge into a pudding. Oh, I am hungry, Mummie, and the runner beans are up, and I got three weeds. Small weeds, but healthy. We can have radishes for tea to-night. More, please.”

Mrs. Hurst disentangled these mingled confidences with the calmness of long practice.

“My phlox seeds are up, too,” she said. “What wouldn’t come up, in weather like this? Finish the cream, darling: I don’t want any more. I’ve made the butter, and there will be three pounds to take down to the store. Bessy is behaving nobly.”

Robin let the thick yellow cream trickle slowly over her porridge.

“Yes, isn’t she? Mr. Merritt was a brick to let us graze Bessy and Roany in the creek paddock—poor dears, they’re so used to it that they would have hated to be the wrong side of the fence!”

“It means a great deal to us,” Mrs. Hurst remarked. “Mr. Merritt is very kind: he said he would use Roany occasionally, to pay for their grazing, but I don’t think he has had him in the plough three times.”

“No, and it would really be better for Roany if he did use him—Roany is getting disgracefully fat and lazy. I think he’d be frisky if it weren’t so much bother. What is the heavenly aroma of cooking, Mummie?—you haven’t been extravagant, have you?”

“Only potato-puffs,” said Mrs. Hurst, emerging from the kitchen with a covered dish. “You were up so early, Robin, and you really need a good breakfast.”

“I always have a good breakfast,” stated her daughter. “Catch me going without! But those puffs are awfully exciting, Mummie.” She gazed fondly at the crisp golden balls as they smoked on her plate. “I wish I could fry things like you. No, not like you—you know what I mean.”

“So you will, when you have a little more practice. You are doing very well as a cook. What are your plans for this morning?”

“I am going to finish painting the front fence. I thought one coat would be enough, but it would be a better job with two. Isn’t it a mercy Uncle Donald bought paint by the gallon? I’ve enough to do ever so much more. What are you going to do, Mummie?”

“Mend sheets—there is a pile waiting for me. I think you had better go to the store with the butter after lunch, Robin—if you take your gun you may get some rabbits, coming home.”

“That’s a good idea,” agreed Robin. “Won’t you come, too?”

“No, not to-day—I want to get all the mending out of the way when once I begin it. Replacing house-linen will be an expensive matter: we can’t afford to let things go at all.” A faint line appeared between her brows.

“Now, you’re worrying about money again, Mummie. And you promised you wouldn’t.”

“I do try not to worry,” said her mother. “Now and then I can’t help it, especially when I wake up at night. If I could only get a little reserve in the bank, Robin—something against a rainy day.”

“But the rainy day may never come.”

“It’s far less likely to come if one has something in the bank. I don’t know why, but it is so. We did save a little, and then my horrible dentist’s bill ate it all up. The idea of illness makes me afraid—supposing I fell ill, and you all alone here, without money!”

“You—you aren’t feeling ill, Mother?” demanded Robin, anxiously.

“No—not a bit. But it may come.” She laughed at the worried face. “I really didn’t mean to talk like this; but I had a wakeful night, and all sorts of bogies came and sat on my pillow. I would do anything if I could earn some money—something to put by.”

“I don’t see how we can do more than we’re doing,” Robin said, knitting her brows. “Remember, the vegetable money will begin to come in soon, and I’ve quite a lot of rabbit skins, already. Oh, I’m sure we’ll manage quite well, darling!” She went to her mother, putting her lips to her hair. “If you begin to worry, things will be sure to go wrong. And we’re so happy!”

“Yes, indeed we are,” said her mother, holding her closely for a moment. “Well, I will try to scare the bogies away from my pillow; and after all, there is nothing like happiness for that. Come and help me to clear up the kitchen—we’re being disgracefully idle.”

Her sewing-machine was humming steadily when Robin passed the window an hour later—a truly remarkable figure in blue denim overalls that had belonged to the late Mr. Donald Hurst. They came to her insteps, ending in an artistic fringe where superfluous length had been ruthlessly shorn. She wore an old felt hat which had also been the property of her uncle. It was an outfit reserved for painting; many white splashes testified to the fact that its use was no unnecessary precaution. She carried a can of paint and a large brush, and sang cheerfully as she went. The strains of “Why Did I Kiss That Girl?” mingled with the chatter of cockatoos in the tree-tops.

Mrs. Hurst looked, and smiled, and sighed. There was no doubt that Robin asked nothing better than her present existence. She seemed to have put away all the childish irresponsibility that had made her school career a series of mad pranks, throwing herself into her unaccustomed work with whole-hearted vigour and complete happiness. But it was more a boy’s life than a girl’s—not the life that Mrs. Hurst had longed to give her. And there was no prospect of anything better. Money anxieties were not the only bogies that had disturbed the mother’s pillow in the night.

Robin was blissfully unconscious of any troubling thoughts. She painted all the morning, using her brush with a fine slap-dash effect that bespattered her overalls even more generously. The spirit of the late Mr. Hurst might have writhed to see the lavishness with which his paint was used. The job was nearly done when Mrs. Hurst came out to warn her that dinner was almost ready. The fence gleamed white against the deep green of the garden, and Robin was by the gate, marking a board “Wet Paint” in letters large enough to warn the most unwary trespasser.

“Just done,” she said, gaily. “Doesn’t it look scumptious, Mother? I think I’ll paint the side-fences, too: it would give the place an almost regal effect, don’t you think?”

“It’s always the way,” Mrs. Hurst said, shaking her head with affected gloom. “I have known many other cases.”

“Cases of what?”

“Paint-fever. You might call it paintitis. They’re very painful.”

“Did you say paint-ful?”

“Agonizing was what I said, I think. The patient begins by painting a curtain-rod, or a book-rack, and that leads to the kitchen-chairs, and then to a garden-fence. After that, she can’t stop. Everything she sees presents itself in a new light—something to be painted. The worst cases go on to decorate the Jersey cow, and the horse, and the pigs. They brighten a property very much, but they’re expensive!”

“This case has already painted her uncle’s pants, and she’ll paint the house red if she doesn’t soon get dinner!” laughed Robin. “Come home—it’s horrid of you to jeer at my artistic instincts, just as they’re developing!”

“It was indeed, and I think the fence is beautiful,” said her mother. “And yes, I do believe it would look better if it were done all round. Robin, our little home is beginning to do us credit!”

“Isn’t it?” agreed Robin, looking affectionately at the white cottage nestling in its girdle of blossoming garden. “What a pity it is we can’t fill it up with poor youngsters who never see anything but streets. How I do hate streets! Tell you what, Mummie, when I find a gold-mine in the hills——”

“_When_ you do!”

“Why, of course I’m going to—the kind all stiff with nuggets, like plums in a pudding! Then we’ll get little convalescents from the Children’s Hospital and put them in all the empty rooms. Plenty of blankets, aren’t there?”

“Plenty—not that that need trouble you when you have the plum-pudding gold-mine!” said her mother laughing.

“No, of course—I forgot that. Well, I’ll buy eiderdown quilts. And we’ll give them all a glorious time. Isn’t it a jolly idea, Mummie! I have heaps of ideas like that while I’m working, and even if they never come to pass I’ll have had all the fun of planning them. They taught me at school that ‘to travel hopefully was a better thing than to arrive,’ or something like that. Well, I haven’t done much arriving yet, but there’s a lot of fun in travelling hopefully!”

Mrs. Hurst looked at the eager, merry face.

“You are certainly a hopeful traveller for one’s journey-mate,” she said. “And now, I am going to give orders, for once. I have sat still almost all the morning, and need exercise, whereas you have worked since sunrise without a break—and that is not good for young muscles. You will therefore take a book out to your bed on the veranda and lie down for at least two hours——”

“And leave you to wash up! Not if I know it!”

“To please me, Robin.”

They smiled at each other.

“But I have to go to the store with the butter——”

“Half-past three or four o’clock will be quite time enough for that. You know quite well that you won’t get rabbits early in the afternoon. Run away and get your boots off; I shall begin to be worried if you are not lying down in five minutes.”

Robin stood up, conscious that her shoulders ached badly.

“Well, I’ll go, because you are mean enough to appeal to my better nature,” she said, laughing. “But lie down, yourself, for a bit, Mummie, darling—you won’t work at that old machine all day?”

“Very well—I promise, if you will do as you are told.” She began to gather plates and dishes swiftly, and Robin went with an unwilling step. But when her mother came softly to the veranda, half an hour later, her book had fallen beside the bed, and Robin lay with her cheek upon her hand, fast asleep.