Chapter VIII: Making Friends

“WHAT are those things?” asked Barry, lounging at the shed doorway, hands in pockets.

“Rabbit-skins,” answered Robin, shortly. She was kneeling by an open box, packing what looked like piles of envelopes of parchment.

“Don’t look much like rabbits.”

“I don’t suppose our skins would look much like us if they were pulled off inside out,” Robin responded, grimly practical. “Ten—eleven—twelve!” She tied a string round the bundle she held, made a note on a piece of paper, and proceeded to count a fresh dozen.

“Where’d you get them?”

“Shot them.” Robin looked ruefully at a much-punctured skin which had apparently been shot at too close quarters, hesitated a moment, and then, with reluctance, decided to reject it. Barry sniggered.

“Gave him the whole cartridge, didn’t you? Did he sit still while you walked up and potted him?”

“Yes—ours always do. Haven’t you noticed? I thought that was how you managed to shoot the two you got.”

Barry flushed. He was grimly aware of the number of cartridges he had expended. Apparently this provoking farm-girl knew something about it, too. He decided to pursue the matter no further.

“What do you do with the skins?”

“Send them to Melbourne.”

“What—are they worth anything? We never keep ours.”

“Don’t suppose you do,” said Robin, carelessly. Her tone classed Barry finally among the people who toil not, neither do they spin: and somehow, Barry fully understood that it was not a compliment.

“Never thought of it,” he responded, equally carelessly. “Who gets yours ready for you?”

“Myself. Seven—eight—nine,” counted Robin.

“You don’t skin rabbits?”

“Yes, I do. Why not?”

“Didn’t think it was a girl’s job, that’s all.” Barry whittled a stick with an unconscious air. “Of course, I suppose country girls are different.”

“How do you mean different?”

“Oh, well, town girls simply couldn’t do jobs like that.”

“Because they wouldn’t know how?”

“Partly. They wouldn’t like it, either.”

“Well, country girls don’t exactly revel in it,” responded Robin. “But we don’t make a silly fuss about doing necessary things. We’ve got more important things to think of than town girls have.”

Barry sniggered again.

“That’s a good one,” he said. “I’d like some of the girls I know to hear you. They’d be amused.”

“They’d be welcome to their amusement, poor things!” said Robin, in a tone of lofty pity. “By the way, do you mind moving out of the light? Thanks—eleven—twelve.” She tied up a new dozen, and Barry felt the warm indignation of a very small boy who has been told to run away and play while older people work. He took up a position on the other side of the wide doorway, whittling more vigorously.

“Ever been in Town?” he asked.

“Oh, yes—now and then. Why?”

“I was thinking it would be rather a surprise to you, in some ways.”

“It is,” said Robin, with surprising meekness. “Awfully exciting, crossing the streets, don’t you think? I get terribly scared.”

Barry assumed the patronizing air of a complete man of the world.

“I suppose you would,” he said. “All the country people do. Awfully funny to see them at Show time—they always get on the wrong trams, and try to talk to the drivers.”

“Nearly as funny as the Town people out at the Show,” said Robin. “Ever seen them trying to understand a disc-plough? And they talk about a horse’s back-foot.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” queried Barry, unwisely.

“Well—if you don’t know. . . . . .” Robin smiled with extreme sweetness, and packed another dozen.

Barry pondered uneasily for a moment, and decided to seek information on the matter from a more sympathetic source. He sought to change the subject, but no inspiration presented itself except rabbit-skins.

“How d’you get those things into that flat shape?”

“Stretch them on bent wires. There are some hanging up,” said Robin, nodding towards a corner of the shed, where skins hung in a dismal row.

“Must need a lot of wires. Do you buy them ready-made?”

“No—catch us wasting money that way! Danny made me those.”

“Oh—that big lout from over at the next farm?”

The gunpowder stored beneath Robin’s red thatch exploded suddenly. Barry, had he not been somewhat overwhelmed by the concussion, might have congratulated himself on having drawn blood at last.

“Don’t you talk like that!” she said, sharply. “I’ve got to be polite to you, ’cause your mother and father are so nice, but if you think you can sneer at our friends you’re jolly well mistaken, Mr. Barry Lane! Danny a lout, indeed! Danny’s got more sense in his little finger than you, or any other town boy, have in your whole body! He could show you the way about everything that really matters, only he wouldn’t be seen wasting his time over you!” She whirled past him, scarlet with anger, and left him to digest her words.

“Whew-w!” whistled Barry. “I put my foot well in that time, didn’t I?” His dark skin had flushed hotly. “Scissors, can’t she flare up! And all over that big farm-chap. He looks a lout, anyhow. But I suppose, living in the country, she doesn’t notice it.” He pondered the matter rather uneasily, realizing, somewhat to his own disgust, that he had transgressed his own code. When you were staying with people you did not abuse their friends. Apparently, that was what he had done.

He strolled round to the front of the house, disconsolately. Dinner was over: before him stretched a long and lonely afternoon. The mail, arriving in the middle of the day, had brought with it a request to Dr. Lane for a paper on some abstruse medical subject for a learned society: the doctor, groaning heavily, had shut himself up in his room, to write until evening. Barry was left to his own resources, and at the moment they seemed to him insufficient.

Mrs. Lane was on her couch. The injury to her ankle was a week old, but she declared that the joint still needed rest, although, to the unprejudiced eye, it looked much like the other. She greeted her son with a quick little smile. He sat down on the edge of the veranda near her.

“Bored, Barry-boy?”

“Oh, no. I’ll go fishing, I think.”

“Then what is wrong?”

Barry grinned at her, recognizing the detective eye. They told each other most things.

“I’ve been cheap,” he said.

“And nasty?”

He nodded. “Yes, a bit.”

“To Robin?”

He nodded again.

“Want to tell me?”

“No, I don’t think so, Mother. Not worth it. But I came to the conclusion I was cheap.”

“When that happens,” said little Mrs. Lane, looking like a wise mother-bird, “the only thing to do is to get back to the level where one belongs. Otherwise one remains marked-down, like the damaged goods at a sale. You’ll find a way. I would go out, if I were you, and show Father you can catch trout without him.” She smiled at him.

“Right-oh!” he said, rising. “I’ll get my kit.”

He came out again presently, in a scout shirt and knickers, with stout wading boots, looking younger than in his customary long trousers.

“I had never thought to see your knees again,” said his mother. “I thought they had disappeared into trousers for ever!”

“Father knew what he was about when he made me bring shorts,” said Barry. “They dry in no time after wading—and you can’t fish these creeks without wading half your time. Great pair of knees, aren’t they, Mother?”

“They’re like a cross-word puzzle, with scratches. How do you manage to knock them about so?”

“Oh—blackberries, and wild raspberries, and prickly-Moses, and other affectionate plants,” he said. “They all seem to cling to me. I’m as clumsy as a bear in the bush—never manage to dodge anything. Father says one doesn’t develop the sense of moving in the bush all at once, so I can only hope it will come.”

“But you like it, Barry?”

The boy’s dark face lit up suddenly.

“Oh, I love it,” he said. “It bored me stiff that first day, but now it grows on me more each time I’m out in it. Father’s an awfully good mate, you know: he shows me ever so many things I’d never see for myself. He’s jolly patient too—I make a fool of myself in heaps of ways, but he never seems to mind.”

“He tells me you are developing a good deal of common sense with your gun.”

Barry beamed.

“Does he? I’m jolly glad. I know I did a lot of idiotic things at first. I nearly hit him the second night—did he tell you, Mother?”

Mrs. Lane repressed a shudder. But her voice was quite calm.

“No, he didn’t tell me, son. I don’t suppose he would tell me that sort of thing. Was it—very near?”

“Oh, well, I hit a tree about ten yards from him. But that wasn’t the point—it might just as well have been Father, because I didn’t know that the blessed thing was going off. I thought it wasn’t cocked.” He looked at her ruefully, and found her smile very comforting.

“As you didn’t hit him, it was probably a very good thing it happened,” she said. “It would teach you a good deal, Barry-boy.”

“That’s just what it did,” he said. “I thought I knew all about it before, and it just showed me what an utter fool I was. Mother, I don’t think I’d ever be that particular kind of idiot again. I just shook for about ten minutes. And he was such a brick about it. I was scared he’d say I mustn’t use a gun again, but instead he said that was just the time to go on using it—so that I wouldn’t be likely to forget. I guess I won’t, either!”—and Barry set his jaw in a hard line.

“Your grandfather believed in that,” said Mrs. Lane. “When I was quite small—yes, I know I am small now, but I was still smaller then!—I used to ride a great grey mare on which I felt rather like a pea sitting on an elephant. I fell off her one day, and was sure I was killed—I believed grandfather thought so, too, until he had picked me up and discovered nothing worse than bruises. Then he caught the grey mare and put me on her at once, while I howled vigorous protests, assuring him that I would fall off again at once. But he only laughed, and said, ‘Not you, Milly!’”

“And did you?” Barry asked, much interested.

“Certainly not. I stuck on, and we galloped home in triumph. And I rode that mare for years, and never had another toss: more than that, I was never afraid again. And you never will be in doubt again as to whether your gun is cocked or not, Barry—you’ll know it is not cocked unless you want to fire!”

“I believe I won’t,” he said. “But I won’t be cock-sure, Mother! Gracious, wasn’t that brilliant, for me, and I never meant to say it, either! I think I’d better go fishing, or I may make more puns.” He took off his cap as she blew him a kiss, and went striding down the hill, his rod over his shoulder.

Luck was kind to him at first: he hooked a trout in a long stretch of rippling water, and managed to land it after five minutes’ highly unscientific play, trembling all the while for fear of making a fatal mistake; quite certain that no rod could stand the strain of being bent like a whip, with a leaping, fighting fish at its delicate end. When he finally managed to net it, after two unsuccessful attempts, and had killed it with a swift, merciful blow, as his father had taught him, he laid the still-twitching body on the grass and fairly gloated. The sunlight rippled on the golden-brown sides, spotted with scarlet. It was a fine fish, nearly two pounds. Barry felt that he had made a definite step towards manhood.

“Lucky for me you were hooked so firmly, old chap,” he said. “I’d have lost you for a certainty if you’d been lightly hooked. Golly, I am glad I got you!” He cleaned the trout and stowed it in his bag.

After that the goddess of Luck removed her face from him, and he fished pool after pool in vain: growing somewhat impatient as the afternoon wore on, and no new capture had gone to join his first prey. Still, it was jolly in the quiet stillness of the bush, where only bird-calls broke the stillness: even if the fish were shy there was fresh excitement in trying each promising bit of water, and always failure was solaced by the comforting weight of the bag—he could go home and show them that a town boy could hook and kill a decent trout unaided. The red-haired girl evidently didn’t think much of townsfolk. Well, he would show her! And then he grew a little less cheerful, for when the red-haired girl was concerned Barry was still feeling cheap.

He was thinking of her when suddenly he came upon her, as he rounded a scrub-covered bend. Ahead was a wide pool with a little rushy island in its midst: he had fished it with his father, and had looked forward to getting to it again, for it was a good pool. But Robin had got there first: a fine trout on the bank beside her, almost as big a fish as his own, showed that she had not wasted her time. As he came, she flicked her spinner across the water again—and uttered an exclamation of annoyance as it caught in a little bush in the island.

Robin tried to twitch it free, but it was evidently held strongly, and she dared not risk breaking her rod. She laid it down on the bank and pulled and jerked the line—all to no purpose. The bush swayed, but the hooks of the spinner clung closely.

“Well, you are a pig!” said Robin, heartily. She glanced round and saw Barry.

“That’s hard luck,” he said. “What will you do?”

“Wade, I suppose,” she answered, shortly.

“Easier to break the line, wouldn’t it?”

Robin looked her scorn of this suggestion.

“That’s a new spinner, and the best cast I’ve got,” she said. “I can’t afford to waste tackle.” She turned from him and looked doubtfully at the water.

“Is it deep?” he asked.

“I’m not sure; it might be better to swim than to wade. It might be snaggy—you never can tell, in these pools, what snags may have floated down and sunk. Oh, I’ll chance wading: if it gets too deep I’ll have to go home and get bathing-togs and swim.”

“I’ll swim over for you,” he offered eagerly.

“It’s all right, thanks,” was Robin’s stiff reply. Evidently she had not forgotten their encounter after lunch: she would not accept any favour from him. She waded out into the pool, while Barry watched her uneasily. The water, swift and brown, seemed to him altogether too deep for wading—especially for a girl.

“I wish you’d let me swim,” he called. “Here, I’ll get my boots off: it doesn’t matter if I get wet.”

He sat down on the bank and unlaced his boots hurriedly, heedless of the fact that Robin had not answered. The socks followed the boots, and he stood barefooted on the bank, again begging her to come back. But Robin’s “red-haired streak,” as her schoolfellows had called it, was uppermost, although she began to realize that the water was too deep for wading. Had she been alone, she would have turned back to the bank: but not before the supercilious youngster who had called good old Danny a lout. “I’ll give it a yard more,” she muttered to herself. “It may not get any deeper than it is now.”

A stone turned under her foot. She lurched forward uncertainly in the knee-deep water, saving herself from falling only by taking a long step. Her foot went down—down: there was no bottom anywhere, and no drawing back. She gave a little choked cry as the water closed over her red head. It was a cry that expressed exasperation more than fear.

She kicked downwards as she sank, to send herself up to the surface, and something closed like a vice upon her foot. Something that held and clung, tantalizing her with a swing that felt as though it were yielding, but never releasing its grip. She knew what it was, as she struggled in sick fear: knew how the old, water-logged gum boughs lie along the bottom, spikes driven into the mud holding the crooked, forked limbs that swing and sway with the current, never released until they rot away and mingle with the stream. She knew how little time she had to fight. Already her lungs seemed bursting with the effort of holding her breath: already her limbs were heavy and helpless. And the grip was no less tight.

On the bank, Barry had uttered an exclamation of dismay as Robin disappeared. He was not alarmed, for she had spoken easily of swimming: still, he knew that no girl likes an involuntary ducking. He waited for the red head to bob up again, prepared to shout sympathetically to her. Fifteen seconds went by: thirty: and suddenly the boy found his heart beginning to pump like an engine.

“She’s been under nearly a minute!” he muttered. “Something’s wrong.” He blessed the impulse that had made him kick off his boots, as he dived into the pool.

The water was muddy with Robin’s struggling, but he came upon her quickly. Sinking down, his hands encountered the imprisoned foot, and he grasped the bough. One of his feet, as he kicked, found a moment’s purchase upon another snag; it held as he put all his force into a desperate tug, slipping off just as the bough broke short at the fork. An inch less, and it would still have gripped Robin’s boot. As it was, Barry saw her float slowly upwards.

He was after her like a flash and drew her into the shallow water: she had not lost consciousness, but was capable of only the feeblest paddling. They reached the bank, and she lay down on the grass, still gasping.

“Swallow any water?” he asked, anxiously.

She shook her head. Under water, Barry Lane was entirely capable: on land he became a rather scared boy, without the faintest idea of what to do for a half-drowned lady in distress. So he rubbed her hands very hard, and uttered disjointed words of encouragement, such as “Buck up, old chap!”—which perhaps was as effective as anything he could have done. At any rate, Robin presently sneezed violently, gave a feeble grin, and sat up.

“I was nearly a goner that time!” she remarked, inelegantly. Her voice shook, and Barry frowned.

“Better lie down again,” he counselled. “I vote you keep quiet and I’ll run up and fetch Father—and some brandy.”

“No—I’m all right. At least I will be in a minute or two,” she shuddered. “Ugh, it was awful down there—I thought I’d never get free. Never would, either, if you hadn’t come. However did you do it?”

Barry grinned feebly.

“Oh, it was easy—I was born in Queensland, and I could swim under water almost before I could walk. We used to have competitions to see who could stay under longest and pick up most things. Only this water was so jolly muddy that it was hard to make out anything.” He sat back on his heels and looked at her. “Sure you’re all right? Golly, you gave me a fright!”

“I’m all right, but I’m awfully cold. I think I’d better move.”

“Let’s help you up,” Barry said. He hauled her ungently to her feet, and she promptly staggered and caught at his shoulder. In a moment her head steadied.

“Now I’m better,” she said. “I’ll just walk home slowly.” She turned, but stopped as he moved towards the creek. “What are you going to do?”

“Just get your spinner,” he said, carelessly. “You go on—I’ll catch you up with the rods.”

“You aren’t going back into that beastly creek!”

“I’m not going to waste your tackle,” he said, laughing. “Don’t worry—I’ll look out for snags.” He swam across carefully, keeping his body almost on the surface, and freed the spinner from the clutches of the bush. In a moment he was back on the bank beside her.

“I say—do go on!” he protested. “I’ve got to get my boots on, and you’ll certainly get pneumonia or something if you stand there with your teeth chattering.”

She stared at him without speaking for an instant. Then she turned and walked unsteadily away, while Barry forced his wet feet into his boots and gathered up the rods and fish. He caught her up in the next paddock.

“Feel all right?”

“Oh, yes—right enough. Just a bit shaky, but nothing to matter.”

“You want a good rub-down and a hot drink,” counselled Barry. “I hope your mother won’t be scared.”

“She won’t, ’cause she’ll see I’m alive,” said Robin, with something of her usual twinkle. It was a washy twinkle, but Barry was relieved to see that it was there. “But we’re a lovely pair, to be coming home!”

“Better wet than dead!” grinned her dripping companion. “And anyhow, we’ve brought home our breakfast!”

“Yes, and you saved my tackle. That was awfully decent of you. You saved my life, too, but you might have felt you had to do that—but there was no need for you to go back after that spinner. I—I’m just awfully obliged to you.” The speech was an effort, and she hurried on, squelching in her wet boots.

Barry might reasonably have felt bewildered at this peculiar distribution of gratitude, but he saw nothing to criticize. He was oppressed by the necessity of making a speech himself.

“I was no end of a swine this morning,” he said, flushing. “What I said about Danny, I mean. It was a low-down thing to say—I’m sorry, Robin.”

She flashed a smile at him.

“That’s all right,” she said, with embarrassment. “I was rather a pig, too. I won’t be again, if you won’t.”

“Rather not!” said Barry. They squelched companionably towards the house.