Mrs. Connellan was simply staggered at this colossal treasure-trove, this majestic piece of gossip that had fallen on her like rain from Heaven. Mr. Grant’s daughter! Going out to Kuryong! What a piece of news! Hardly knowing what she did, she shuffled out of the room, and interrupted the singing waitress who was wiping plates, and had just got back to “It’s a vilet” when Mrs. Connellan burst in on her.
“Maggie! Maggie! Do you know who that is? Grant’s daughter! The one that used to be in England. She must be going to Kuryong to live, with all that luggage. What’ll the Gordons say? The old lady won’t like it, will she? This’ll be a bit of news, won’t it?” And she went off to tell the cook, while Maggie darted to the door to meet Dan, and tell him.
Dan told the station-master when he went back for the next load, and when he had finished carting the luggage he got on a horse and went round telling everybody in the little town. The station-master told the ganger of the four navvies who went by on their trolly down the line to work. At the end of their four-mile length they told the ration-carrier of Eubindal station, who happened to call in at their camp for a drink of tea. He hurried off to the head-station with the news, and on his way told three teamsters, an inspector of selections, and a black boy belonging to Mylong station, whom he happened to meet on the road. Each of them told everybody that they met, pulling up and standing in their stirrups to discuss the matter in all its bearings, in the leisurely style of the bush; and wondering what she had come out for, whether the Gordons would get the sack from Kuryong, whether she would marry Hugh Gordon, whether she was engaged already, whether she was good-looking, how much money she had, and how much old Grant would leave her. In fact, before twenty-four hours were over, all the district knew of her arrival; which possibly explains how news travels in Africa among the Kaffirs, who are supposed to have a signalling system that no one has yet fathomed; but the way it gets round in Australia is just as wonderful as among the Kaffirs, in fact, for speed and thoroughness of information we should be inclined to think that our coloured brethren run a bad second.
At last, however, Tracey had finished shoeing the coach-horse, and Miss Grant, with part of her luggage, took a seat on the coach behind five of Donohoe’s worst horses, next to a well-dressed, powerfully-built man of about five-and-twenty. He looked and talked like a gentleman, and she heard the coachman address him as “Mr. Blake.” She and he shared the box-seat with the driver, and just at the last moment the local priest hurried up and climbed on the coach. In some unaccountable way he had missed hearing who the young lady was, and for a time he could only look at her back-hair and wonder.
It was not long before, in the free and easy Australian style, the passengers began to talk to each other as the coach bumped along its monotonous road—up one hill, through an avenue of dusty, tired-looking gum-trees, down the other side through a similar avenue, up another hill precisely the same as the last, and so on.
Blake was the first to make advances. “Not much to be seen on this sort of journey, Miss Grant,” he said.
The young lady looked at him with serious eyes. “No,” she said, “we’ve only seen two houses since we left the town. All the rest of the country seems to be a wilderness.”
Here the priest broke in. He was a broth of a boy from Maynooth, just the man to handle the Doyle and Donohoe congregation.
“It’s the big stations is the roon of the country,” he said. “How is the country to go ahead at all wid all the good land locked up? There’s Kuryong on ahead here would support two hundthred fam’lies, and what does it employ now? Half a dozen shepherds, widout a rag to their back.”
“I am going to Kuryong,” said the girl; and the priest was silent.