On the day when Hugh and Mrs. Gordon read Mr. Grant’s letter at Kuryong, the train deposited at Tarrong a self-reliant young lady of about twenty, accompanied by nearly a truck-full of luggage—solid leather portmanteaux, canvas-covered bags, iron boxes, and so on—which produced a great sensation among the rustics. She was handsome enough to be called a beauty, and everything about her spoke of exuberant health and vitality. Her figure was supple, and she had the clear pink and white complexion which belongs to cold climates.
She seemed accustomed to being waited on, and watched without emotion the guard and the solitary railway official—porter, station-master, telegraph-operator and lantern-man, all rolled into one—haul her hundredweights of luggage out of the train. Then she told the perspiring station-master, etc., to please have the luggage sent to the hotel, and marched over to that building in quite an assured way, carrying a small handbag. Three commercial travellers, who had come up by the same train, followed her off the platform, and the most gallant of the three winked at his friends, and then stepped up and offered to carry her bag. The young lady gave him a pleasant smile, and handed him the bag; together they crossed the street, while the other commercials marched disconsolately behind. At the door of the hotel she took the bag from her cavalier, and there and then, in broad Australian daylight, rewarded him with twopence—a disaster which caused him to apply to his firm for transfer to some foreign country at once. She marched into the bar, where Dan, the landlord’s son, was sweeping, while Mrs. Connellan, the landlady, was wiping glasses in the midst of a stale fragrance of overnight beer and tobacco-smoke.
“I am going to Kuryong,” said the young lady, “and I expected to meet Mr. Gordon here. Is he here?”
Mrs. Connellan looked at her open-eyed. Such an apparition was not often seen in Tarrong. Mr. and Mrs. Connellan had only just “taken the pub.”, and what with trying to keep Connellan sober and refusing drinks to tramps, loafers, and black-fellows, Mrs. Connellan was pretty well worn out. As for making the hotel pay, that idea had been given up long ago. It was against Mrs. Connellan’s instincts of hospitality to charge anyone for a meal or a bed, and when any great rush of bar trade took place it generally turned out to be “Connellan’s shout,” so the hotel was not exactly a goldmine. In fact, Mrs. Connellan had decided that the less business she did, the more money she would make; and she rather preferred that people should not stop at her hotel. This girl looked as if she would give trouble; might even expect clean beds and clean sheets when there were none within the hotel, and might object to fleas, of which there were plenty. So the landlady pulled herself together, and decided to speed the parting guest as speedily as possible.
“Mr. Gordon couldn’t git in,” she said. “The cricks (creeks) is all up. The coach is going down to Kiley’s Crossing to-day. You had better go with that.”
“How soon does the coach start?”
“In an hour or two. As soon as Pat Donohoe, the mailman, has got a horse shod. Come in and have a wash, and fix yourself up till breakfast is ready. Where’s your bag?”
“My luggage is at the railway-station.”
“I’ll send Dan over for it. Dan, Dan, Dan!”
“’Ello,” said Dan’s voice, from the passage, where, with the wild-eyed servant-girl, he had been taking stock of the new arrival.