Chapter III: Dot and Larrie Fall Out

'And though she is but little, she is fierce.'

The cottage was a delightful place. It was built of weatherboard, not the kind that overlaps, but that with a groove between each board. The verandah was very wide and ran round the four sides; that was Larrie's great extravagance when he improved the place.

'Where's a fellow to smoke when it's hot or wet if there isn't a decent verandah?' he said.

He and Dot had walked miles upon it in the early months of the year, he with his pipe in his lips and a look of great content in his eyes, she with her hands linked at the back of her neck or slipped around his arm.

There was a profusion of hammocks and lounges and chairs that made you lazy to look at them. That was Dot's extravagance. On one side the outer wall was of yellow and white roses that flowered eternally, on another, wistaria with delicate down-dropping blooms. The third--the kitchen side--was passion-vines, and the fourth was clear, and showed a grand sweep of country, and all the Sydney vista.

There was a narrow hall and a painted front door, on either side of it long French windows opening, one into the dining-room, the other into Dot's beautiful little drawing-room.

She had spent a week thinking out the furnishing of that room, and nearly all her mother's wedding-present cheque upon it.

'No, I won't have a carpet,' she said when her mother was dwelling upon the advantages of Brussels over Wilton pile, 'and no, I won't have felt, it's too stuffy looking; and if you buy me a proper tapestry suite I shall set fire to it. In India people furnish sensibly, but in Australia, which must be nearly as hot, they do everything in English style.'

The little mother ceased her suggestions, and Dot worked her own will with really charming effect.

The room was rather low, and the walls and ceiling tinted a delicate green. There was a large centre square of white matting, fringed at the edge and a border of pale green around it. The three French windows had long soft curtains of white with pale green frills. No two chairs were alike. They were of rattan and pith, and bamboo in quaint shapes. One had a flat sea-green cushion of plush, one a triangular one of silk with frills of coral pink; there was a lovely pith sofa lounge, wide, inviting, with a pile of pillows in cool Liberty silk. In a corner the piano stood, a beautiful instrument though very plain. It was not draped in art muslin, and it had no photos or _bric-à-brac_ on it to jingle and spoil the wonderful music Dot brought forth from it. A great lamp stood beside it with a green crinkled paper canopy, restful to the eye.

In another corner there was a low bookcase running along the wall; volumes of Browning caught the eye, Tennyson, William Morris, Shelley, Keats, all the gods.

There was a sandal wood writing-table, with silver handles and silver equipments, a silver lamp with a rose-leaf shade, and a photo of baby in a silver chased frame.

There was not a tambourine on the walls, not a single fan pocket, not a plaque. Half-a-dozen pictures perhaps, bits of exquisite colouring chiefly in long narrow gold frames; a sunset at Manly Lagoon, a bit of the Kanimbla valley, with summer upon it, a water colour of the road above Mossman's Bay, a woman's face, pale and unspeakably beautiful, painted against a background of purple velvet, some chrysanthemums, tawny yellow and brown.

One or two engravings as well. 'Wedded' in an oak frame hung over the piano. Dot said the man was Larrie's very counterpart; when she sang she used to look up at it and feel glad he was her husband. On a tall easel on a table there was the 'Peacemaker.' Larrie said the little girl was Dot. There were bits of quaint china on the little tables, and a few photographs, not many. Flowers there were in all possible places. Daffodils and spiky leaves in the windows, roses and 'shivery' grass on the tables, low vases of violets and primroses, tall ones of jonquils. Dot dusted this room herself every morning, then before she could put the duster away, the piano would tempt her, and the rest of the house be forgotten. But for Peggie what a place it would have been!

Peggie was a real Cornstalk. She was fully five-feet-eleven, and had impossibly long arms and an impossible number of freckles. But she had also all a Cornstalk's warm, honest heart; she was devoted to Dot and Larrie, and absolutely worshipped the baby. She made no better a servant as far as work went, than the average untrained Australian girl; but she was wonderfully learned in the ways and wants of babyhood, and so was invaluable to Dot who was absurdly ignorant. When Larrie had engaged her twelve months ago at a Sydney registry office, he had asked her name.

'Marjorie Dorothy Pegerton,' she said.

'Ah!' said Larrie, 'that's a high day and holiday name, shall we say Mary on week days?'

'Marjie, some folks call me,' she answered. 'Or there's Dolly--I'm not particular--you can even call me Peg if you like, Mr--what was it the gentleman said your name was?'

'Armitage,' said Larrie, 'and let us decide on Peggie; it is unique, and altogether charming in these days.'

They were both very fond of Peggie, she was the stay of the cottage in all domestic affairs--it would have fallen to pieces but for her, and the baby--well there is really no knowing what would have happened to that same baby had it not been for Peggie.

Larrie generally minded the baby on Thursday mornings. It was Thursday morning now. Peggie was doing her routine work for that time, scrubbing the bare pine floors of the bedrooms. Larrie and Dot both hated carpets.

Larrie was smoking his third postprandial pipe, and was pacing up and down one side of the verandah; he would have liked to have gone the whole distance, but then there was the baby.

It was lying in a hammock in a nest of pillows, and looking with calm, large gaze out into all the world that appeared through a gap in the rose creeper. There was the pink flush of recent sleep on its little soft cheeks, and its hair, the softest, warmest gold in the world, was all tumbled and curly with washing. It had a wonderful amount of hair for so young a child, and Dot's pride in it was forgivable, for nearly all the babies of her acquaintance were bald.

Have you ever kissed a baby's neck? Was ever anything so warm and white and velvety? The neck of Dot's baby was absolutely beyond description. Its mouth was red, bowshaped. Sometimes it gave wide wet touches on Dot's cheeks, and she would whisper excitedly to Larrie that it was kissing her.

Such wonderful, wondering eyes it had, intensely blue, intensely earnest. There had been moments when Larrie felt he would give his soul to know just what his baby was thinking of.

Did you show it a beautiful flower or a low hanging silver moon, a picture, something bright with colour? it seemed to be looking away far beyond them and smiling in a faint sweet way, because it saw fairer things than ever you dreamed of.

Its hands--well, perhaps they were like most babies' hands, but neither Dot, nor Larrie, nor Peggie, nor the little mother would have allowed it for a moment. They were like the inside of a flushed, curled, rose-leaf, and when they closed round your finger, you felt how strangely sweet, and soft and warm they were. From the long open window came the sound of Dot's voice, singing. The baby was listening as it lay in the hammock. Larrie was listening as he smoked, though in a half reluctant way.

When little souls are born, just before they come to us from the wonderful place of souls, they have to do with a lottery. To a thousand little blind struggling souls, there are half-a-dozen great good gifts. Nine hundred and ninety-four draw blanks, but the band of six come down to us blessed, rejoicing. Dot had been of the six. She had drawn a voice. Generally Larrie rejoiced because of it.

Not this morning, however. He had been brooding lately over Dot's deficiencies, and he almost wished she had been of the nine hundred and ninety-four. For one thing, he could have walked all the four sides of the verandah if she had been. The thought rankled.

'Dot,' he called in 'a voice.'

Only little bursts of melody answered him. She was singing a rippling song of Schubert's; it was in keeping with the warm, soft air outside, the twittering of birds, the faint motion of the gum leaves.

'Dot!' he shouted.

She put a curly little head between the window curtains.

'Well, Larrakin?' she said.

'Come and mind the baby,' he said shortly, 'I want to smoke.'

'But baby doesn't mind smoke at all--do you, small sweet?' she said, going over to the hammock. 'Oh Larrie, look how uncomfortable he is, you're a nice one to look after him; and where's his comforter? he'll have no thumb left presently.'

'I threw it away,' Larrie answered, 'all that indiarubber can't be good for him, I don't intend him to have another.'

'Stupid!' said Dot. She kissed the baby, tickled it, tossed it, then laid it down again.

'What did you call me for,' she said. 'I was just enjoying myself.' Her eyes still had the look of being away in the spheres. 'He's all right there and it's your turn to mind him, Larrie. I walked him about for an hour in the night.'

She moved to go in again.

'Stop here when I tell you, and mind him,' he said in an unpardonable voice.

Dot gave him a surprised look.

'You forget yourself, Larrie,' she said quietly.

She went in and her fingers wandered into the quiet, calm music of one of Mendelssohn's gondola songs. But she took it in rather hurried time. Larrie disturbed her when he had this mood on. He came behind her and lifted her hands off the keyboard.

'Go and mind the child this minute.' The flame in his eyes showed itself instantly in hers.

'How dare you speak to me like that!' she said.

'Go and mind the child,' said Larrie.

Dot crashed a passionate chord on the piano, she lifted her right hand for a brilliant run. But Larrie picked her up in his arms and put her outside on the verandah near the hammock. Then he went in and closed the drawing-room door behind him.

By the time she had flown round through the dining-room he was locking the piano.

'How _dare_ you!' Dot said in trembling fury. 'My piano! give me that key instantly.'

'Go and mind your child,' he said. He was stooping a little, for the key stuck, since it was never used; his head was almost on a level with the lid.

The next minute he was standing straight in confused astoundment. Dot had dealt him a passionate box on the ear, and fled from the room.