Chapter VII: A Business Arrangement

“I COULD ask Mrs. Hurst, of course,” said Mrs. Lane, doubtfully. “I wonder if she would be offended?”

“Not a bit likely, I should think,” her husband answered. “She strikes one as far too sensible a woman to be offended by a simple business proposal. And it might suit her very well: I gathered from something she said last night that they have not much money.”

“And you would not be bored—you and Barry?”

“Barry and I want to fish,” said Dr. Lane. “And here we’re right in the midst of it. I might have explored round here by myself for a week without finding that little creek young Robin showed me last night—and you wouldn’t have had trout for breakfast, my dear!” His eye kindled at the recollection of the previous evening. “Nearly three pounds, the biggest fellow weighed; and four others of quite a respectable size! After failing to get a rise all day it was almost exciting, I tell you, Milly!”

“Yes, dear, it was lovely for you,” said Mrs. Lane, with wifely sympathy. “And how perfectly Mrs. Hurst cooked them!”

“Couldn’t have been better. It was a cheerful contrast to the greasy chops at the Baroin hotel. Of course it will be dull for you, dear, I’m afraid: but not so dull as it would be in the township, I’m certain. If you would let me take you home—”

“That is not to be thought of,” interrupted his wife. “Why, you have not had a holiday for two years!” She smiled at him. “And there is Barry, too.”

“Yes, there’s Barry. I want him to be quite fit before he goes back. He’s keen on the fishing, too, and I must say I should like him to learn something besides city ways. It’s too bad that he’s over fifteen and doesn’t know one end of a rod or a gun from the other. If Mrs. Hurst would have us here, there would be no twelve-mile drive night and morning along that track you dislike so much—”

“That would decide it, if there were no other advantages!” spoke Mrs. Lane, briskly. “I’ll ask Mrs. Hurst, dear: after all, she can hardly be offended. I’ll put it very nicely.”

“I have always remarked that when you are truly tactful you are hard to refuse,” said the doctor, gravely. “So I’ll hope for the best. I do hope you won’t be horribly bored, dear; it’s all very rough on you. You have plenty of books to go on with, haven’t you? Of course I can order anything you like from Town. We can get the mail every day.”

“Oh, I shall manage famously,” she said. “Don’t think of worrying about me. I shall write all the letters I should have written ever so long ago, and read all the books. And I daresay Mrs. Hurst and that nice red Robin will come and talk to me.”

“We seem to be taking it for granted that Mrs. Hurst will consent,” her husband remarked. “It will be rather a blow if she won’t have us.”

But Mrs. Hurst, handled tactfully, proved responsive. At first she felt a quick flush of pride and of outraged hospitality; to make money out of these stranded people who were her guests, seemed an impossible thing. Then common sense came to her aid. The Lanes, also, had their pride; clearly, it was unthinkable that they should remain without making any payment. And their wish to remain was very evident: Mrs. Hurst liked to see it.

Then, too, came in her own urgent need of money. Despite her promise to Robin not to worry, the thought of their tiny bank balance was never out of her mind: it was so flimsy a barrier between them and disaster, should bad times come. Dr. Lane’s offer was a generous one—more, she knew, than he would have paid the hotel in Baroin. She protested against it.

“It is too much for simple farm-house accommodation,” she told him, when he came to join in the discussion. At which he laughed.

“If you saw our stuffy rooms in that hotel—!” he said. “This is luxury; your delightful, airy rooms, and the clean freshness everywhere. It would be ten times the holiday for us. Think, too, of all I shall save in petrol, apart from the joys of the mantelshelf road which your daughter says I must not malign. And my wife cannot help giving you some extra trouble, until her ankle is better.”

“But you do not realize our limitations,” she said. “I can’t always get good meat out here—I have to put up with whatever the travelling cart brings, three times a week. And there are other difficulties. Robin and I live so simply that we do not notice them, but to you—from Melbourne . . . .” She paused unhappily, and he laughed at her again.

“As it happens, meat does not matter much to any of us,” he said. “Fish—such trout as these—is a treat to us, and so are rabbits, which we dare not touch in Melbourne. Barry and I can shoot and fish for the pot, which will give us an extra incentive to do well. Try us for a week, Mrs. Hurst, and see if we give you too much trouble.”

Mrs. Hurst had agreed, with some misgivings, and inwardly wondering how Robin would view the matter. But Robin was frankly delighted.

“Why, we’ll make heaps of money!” she said. “And it will be rather fine, Mother, to have people about: I don’t much like the boy, but his father and mother are dears.”

“Why don’t you like the boy? He seems civil enough.”

“Oh, he’s civil,” said Robin, tilting her nose. “But he thinks too much of himself, and he looks at my hair! He has a kind of lofty manner, as if he thought it was very nice for the country that he came to stay there.”

“Poor Barry!” said Mrs. Hurst, smiling. “Aren’t you a little hard on him?”

“Well, I may be,” admitted Robin. “But I haven’t much time for boys, especially town ones. Danny is worth a paddockful of them! I say, Mother, are you sure it won’t give you too much work?”

“I shan’t mind it at all. I must drop other things, more or less: but the garden is in such good order that it won’t suffer. The sewing can wait.”

“Well, of course I’ll do all the rough work,” said Robin, sturdily. “I can be housemaid and slushy, and you can be head cook and lady-of-the-house. ’Tisn’t everyone could double those two parts, but you could cook with one hand tied behind you! Now, if anyone speaks to me when I’m frying fish, it’s all up with either me or the fish! I can run errands for Mrs. Lane, and carry out her trays—we’ll make her live on trays out on the veranda, shall we, Mother?”

“It sounds uncomfortable,” smiled Mrs. Hurst. “Still—”

“Oh, you know what I mean. We can fix her up in a jolly corner with a couch and a little table, and she really won’t be much bother! I suppose Dr. Lane and Barry will be out all day—that means cutting lunches: I can do that all right. Mother, hadn’t I better go down to Merri Creek this afternoon and telephone to the store in Baroin for things? We haven’t nearly enough groceries.”

“Yes—and you must tell Mrs. Hawkes I shall not be able to send her any butter for awhile. We shall have to plan things, Robin; it won’t do to be caught without food, if fish and rabbits fail.”

“Lucky I was commissariat department at school,” said Robin, with an impish grin. “There are four or five fowls that can be killed.” Suddenly her face clouded. “Mother, I could get Danny to do the killing, couldn’t I?”

“Yes, indeed,” said her mother, hastily. “You didn’t think I would let you do it?”

“I ought to want to do it, and save money,” said Robin, still looking distressed. “But I couldn’t kill my chooks, unless I really had to. Rabbits are different, though I don’t enjoy dealing with them, either. Still, they’re strangers to me, and the chooks are intimate friends. I should feel like the lady who suggested cutting her baby in half for King Solomon!”

The arrangement, begun with many misgivings on the part of Mrs. Hurst, worked with remarkable smoothness. Never, she declared, were paying guests less trouble than hers: they appeared to enjoy everything, never grumbled, and gave as little trouble as was possible. On the other hand, the Lanes rejoiced in the peace and freedom of Hill Farm. The food was simple, but it was well cooked and daintily served: succulent grills and savoury roasts were not, indeed, to be procured, but Mrs. Hurst had the skill of a magician in making the indifferent meat of the travelling cart assume appetizing forms, and Dr. Lane was frankly bewildered by the variations in their meals, and assured his hostess that she was a perpetual surprise. The freshest of vegetables, the yellowest of butter, the thickest of cream—all were delightful to people accustomed to eating food long past its first freshness. “If I have eggs for breakfast here,” said the doctor, “I am morally certain that the hens have scarcely finished cackling over them before I have eaten them! I am growing disgracefully fat!”

Barry and his father fished and shot early and late, comfortably certain that no one minded erratic hours for breakfast and tea. Dr. Lane had at first made a heroic effort to be punctual, and had protested when Mrs. Hurst assured him cheerfully that it was not necessary.

“But what does it matter?” she had asked. “Robin and I have no servants to hamper us: it does not trouble us at all if you do come in late. And we know what it means for you to have the morning and evening rise for fishing; how stupid it would be for you to miss them on account of mere meals! As for the rabbits—if you want them, you simply _must_ be out in the evening. I can’t give you dinner at night, but you can have a meal whenever you choose to come in.”

“But the trouble to you—”

“Why, there isn’t any trouble. I make my preparations beforehand, and all the rest can be done while you are taking off your boots or washing your hands.”

“But it is keeping you on duty all the time. If you had heard the frigid warnings of the hotel in Baroin as to what we might expect if we got home after six—!” At which Mrs. Hurst’s head went up.

“But I am not the Baroin hotel, Dr. Lane. You must recognize certain differences between Hill Farm and that haughty establishment.” Dr. Lane had laughed at the twinkle in her eye.

“I thank my lucky stars for them every day,” he had responded. “Well, if you are really sure that it does not make things too hard for you, it is certainly delightful to feel that one can carry on with a free conscience. I’m the slave of a time-table in Melbourne: it is sheer rest to know that at Hill Farm time does not seem to exist.”

“Only so far as you wish it to exist,” Mrs. Hurst had answered. “We want you to enjoy yourselves, Robin and I.”

Mrs. Lane had shaken down to captivity with surprising philosophy. Her husband had devoted his first morning to the manufacture of a makeshift crutch, by means of which she could move about a little, giving her a feeling of independence that added greatly to her cheerfulness. She laughed delightedly at her own clumsy efforts at movement, even while the pain made her wince.

“I was always taught by my mother that grace was essential to a woman!” she said. “Dear me, if she could see me now! Robin, you bad child, don’t laugh at the afflicted—you should be full of sympathy.”

“I am; but you would make anyone laugh,” Robin defended herself. She was standing by, ready to help the guest’s progress towards the veranda. “Do lean on me a bit, Mrs. Lane—I know it’s hurting you horribly, and I don’t believe Dr. Lane would approve.”

“Certainly he wouldn’t—but then, men are so fussy, aren’t they?” responded the afflicted one. “And I won’t be more helpless than I have to be. Just be handy in case I stumble. I shall be much more accomplished to-morrow; this third leg of mine isn’t really broken-in yet.” She reached the couch in safety, and collapsed upon it with a sigh of relief.

“There!—I did it! Just lift the old ankle up for me, my dear, and put that horrid implement where I can’t see it—not out of my reach, though. I may feel the need of exercise later on.”

“I don’t think you ought to feel any such thing,” said Robin, much concerned, although it was impossible not to laugh at the cheerful sufferer. “See, there’s a little bell on your table, Mrs. Lane: do ring if you want anything. I shall be just round the corner.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Thin my turnips; they’re crowding each other out of the ground.”

“Dear me!” said Mrs. Lane, looking at her respectfully. “You and your mother are people of many activities. I wish you would sit down and be restful for a few minutes: I know I saw you pass my window at five o’clock this morning.”

“Very likely,” Robin said, smiling. “I hope I didn’t disturb you, though.”

“No: I was awake. Do sit down: I know I’ll need something in about two minutes—I don’t remember yet what it is, but it will come to me! So it would be a pity if you went. That’s right; now I can feel more restful myself. Tell me, why do you and your mother live in this big place alone? I know I’m very inquisitive, but I was born so.”

“Well, we must live somewhere,” Robin laughed. “And Uncle Donald left the place to Mother. He was an old widower, and he hadn’t anyone else to leave it to—that’s why we got it.”

“And did he live here alone?”

“Yes, but for a housekeeper. He bought the place very cheaply: of course, he didn’t use it all, but it was so cheap he didn’t mind that. Uncle Donald never could resist a bargain. He used to buy things at sales, just because they were cheap; the house is full of queer old things he picked up.” Robin grinned. “I was the worst bargain he ever made!”

“Did he get you cheaply?”

“He got me for nothing, but he thought I was dear at any price. It was mostly my hair, I think: it had a most irritating effect upon him. Goodness knows, it’s burden enough to carry a flame-coloured head through life, without one’s uncles objecting to it. I thought it should make me an object of sympathy, but Uncle Donald seemed to fancy that the sympathy should be given to him!”

Mrs. Lane chuckled delightedly.

“Then you didn’t get on very well?”

“Well—not exactly,” said Robin, demurely. “We disapproved of each other. I could have put up with that, but I couldn’t stand the way he used to speak to Mother. He really wasn’t a nice old man, Mrs. Lane. You would have said so yourself!”

“He doesn’t sound nice,” said Mrs. Lane. “But I like his house. Don’t you and your mother find it very lonely, though? I can imagine being happy here for a few weeks—but to live here! I should want more civilization and fewer cows!”

“Oh, we’re never lonely. There is too much to do, and we’re so glad to be together. You see, I was away at school for two years, and we both hated that.” She jumped up, suddenly, as her mother appeared, bearing a tray. “Mother, you ought to have called me to carry that!”

“I thought you were in the garden—but I’m very glad to find you sitting down,” said Mrs. Hurst, smiling at her. “Just a cup of eleven o’clock tea, Mrs. Lane. I hope Robin has been looking after you.”

“Excellently—and I have been shamelessly keeping her from her work. But she begins so early!”

“Indeed she does—too early. I was just going to call you in for your tea, Robin.”

“Do have it out here with me,” begged Mrs. Lane.

Mrs. Hurst twinkled.

“I’m not sure that that would be correct behaviour,” she said. “Is it done?—the farm-workers intruding on the guest—?”

“Don’t be horrid!” pleaded the guest. “I am an invalid, and I need special treatment. Robin, dear, do bring your Mother’s tea and your own, and let us have a party. Cheerful companionship is what my ankle needs.”

“But—Madam’s luncheon?” laughed Mrs. Hurst, sitting down, obediently.

“Oh—lunch!” said the afflicted guest, scornfully. “Madam can eat a boiled egg. She consumes nourishment in your house at such frequent intervals that when her ankle is better she’ll only be able to waddle! You bring out to me trays loaded with food, and I strongly suspect you both of perching on the kitchen-table and dining on bread-and-butter.”

Mrs. Hurst shook her head.

“I might,” she admitted, “if it were not that I have Robin—just as Robin certainly would, but for the fact that she has me.”

“Not me!” said Robin, firmly. “I want full rations.”

“She certainly needs them, for she works very hard,” said her mother. “So I make a point of having meals properly served: it is good for us both, for it’s easy for women living alone to get into slack ways. We don’t perch on the kitchen-table; we eat very respectably, on the veranda.”

“But how nice! May I come there, too, when my silly ankle is better? I won’t ask you when Edward and Barry happen to be at home, for I know you would hate to have the whole party there—”

“I would!” Mrs. Hurst smiled, frankly.

“But when it is just we three? At home I have lunch alone every day—it suits Edward better to lunch at his club, and Barry is at school. I hate the sight of the lonely table.”

“We should like to have you very much, if you can bear lunching with people in working clothes. No human power can get Robin out of breeches until the evening, and not always then!”

“I should think not,” said Robin, warmly. “Fancy getting into a frock when one has to feed pigs!”

Mrs. Lane shuddered delicately.

“I don’t know how you do it—and manage to remain so nice!” she said.

“Oh, it’s all fun,” Robin answered. “I haven’t yet managed to see the fun of skinning rabbits, but it has to be done: no doubt the humour of it will strike me in time. Mrs. Lane, when you are better, aren’t you going out with your menfolk? You’d have an awfully good time!”

Again the guest shuddered.

“My dear,” she said, confidentially, “I was never made for the country. I can be quite happy while my men-folk are enjoying themselves, so long as they don’t ask me to join them: I simply loathe a gun, and as for dangling a worm on a fishing-rod, nothing bores me more, unless it is casting a fly, which I find actively irritating—cast as I will, the abominable insect never goes in the right place! I think your veranda is delightful, as long as no one asks me to look at the scenery or to gaze at live cows or chickens—or pigs! All, to my mind, are better in their inanimate forms. You won’t ask me to admire ducklings, will you, Robin, dear?”

“Never—unless cooked!” said Robin, laughing.

“Oh, then I can admire them whole-heartedly. What an understanding child you are! No—I really don’t want my ankle to recover too quickly: then I can lie here with an easy mind, read and write, and realize that civilization is really not far off whenever I see a motor crawling painfully along that awful track below. I can also be devoutly thankful that I am not in it! Life is full of compensations to the injured, I find—especially in a place like Hill Farm.”

“It is very cheering that you can take it that way,” said Mrs. Hurst, smiling at the merry, mischievous face—there were times when it seemed ridiculous to think that Mrs. Lane was really the mother of a boy of fifteen. “I hope your husband and Barry are as happy.”

“My dear, they’re in ecstasies! Edward says he has never been so delighted with a place—as for Barry, he shot two rabbits yesterday and caught three trout and an eel, and apparently life has nothing more to offer him. We are only haunted by a fear that you will find we give you too much trouble, and send us back to that appalling hotel!”

Mrs. Hurst laughed outright.

“Why, you’re no trouble at all! Dr. Lane brings in all his game ready prepared for the table—I wonder does he dream how Robin and I bless him for it!—and as for you, we give you a bell which you never dream of ringing. I caught your husband chopping wood yesterday, much to my horror. He wasn’t in the least impressed by my protests—in fact, he sent me away, and he and Barry brought the wood in, and filled the box!”

“Don’t dream of interfering with his pastimes!” said his wife. “He chops wood at home when he has had an unusually aggravating patient—it seems to work off his pent-up feelings.”

“I hope he has not any feelings of that kind here,” spoke Mrs. Hurst, with some anxiety.

“Oh, no—it’s just the joy of living, in this case: it has to find expression somewhere. Barry works his off by singing in his bath, and as his voice has not quite finished cracking, the effect is blithe, but peculiar. We’re just a very fortunate family, Mrs. Hurst, and we hope you’ll keep us a month!”

Robin rose with an air of determination.

“In that case,” she said, briskly, “I’ve simply _got_ to go and thin those turnips!”