"Margaret," said Mrs. Law at this moment from the other side of the room, "here's Beffling been asking Mr. Crosby three times what he would like for his lunch."
"There's some o' my beef-tea, sir, reel kind, which I can hot it in a minnut. With a strip or two of toast it do relish of a mornin'. I'm sure, sir, if I may mek so bold as t' say, you wants a little something to bring back the colour to your cheeks. Or a chop now, done rare, but brown o' the outside," said the buxom old creature, holding up one fat finger to emphasise her description and smiling a seductive smile.
"Thank you, Mrs. Beffling, I should like them both, I'm sure," said Crosby, stepping forward with a beaming face from the window, "but I feel as though I had everything I want on earth, and therefore am not hungry."
"Lucky bargee," said Yesslett to Geordie, who answered with an impudent grin, for he had begun to suspect what turn things were taking.
"Which both it shall be," said Mrs. Beffling, accepting the first part of Martin's sentence, but utterly ignoring the latter half of it. "Also the hegg beat up in milk for you, Mr. George; yes, you must, the doctor says so, and I shall send it in whether you drinks it or no, and every drop is expected to be took." Quite breathless after this, but smiling on the invalids as though they conferred a personal favour on her by being ill, the kind-hearted old soul retreated to her fortress, where she instantly set about preparing these few trifles for the interesting convalescents.
To see her beaming face when she brought in a tray was better than any doctor's stuff; and often and often have patients taken her nourishing things when they loathed the very idea of food, sooner than disappoint her or wound her feelings by refusing them.
"Yess," whispered Geordie, "you'll have to help me out with my jorum; I haven't got over my breakfast yet."
"All right," said Yesslett, in the most obliging manner. He ought to have ridden over to the South Creek Station that morning, but he had struck, and nothing would induce him to go before to-morrow he said, for he had not heard any of the boys' adventures yet, as Geordie had not been allowed to talk much till that morning, and Alec had spent nearly all yesterday either in Geordie's or Martin's room. Now, at last, he had both of them, and Crosby as well, to question and to listen to, "and that's what I mean to do," he said.
He did not do it then, however, for almost directly after Mrs. Beffling had left the room the door was flung wide open and Macleod appeared, in what, for him, was a white heat of indignation and anger, for the sincere, cold-blooded, but affectionate old Scotsman rarely expressed any emotion whatever.
"Did ony mon iver heer tell o' sich doen's? Ah've joost ridden uver fra' Bateman, an' theer ah've seen, 'deed leddies it's true, that foul, whamsie scrappit, Crosbie o' Brisbane. He's got a bit of a lawyer chap wi' him, as a whitnuss, I suppoose, as all his doen's are legal accordin' to law. He says he's coomin' to Wandaroo to put a mon in legal possession o' the roon; and that unless we can produce £4,887 18s. 7d.," here the precise Macleod looked at a strip of paper, torn from the edge of some journal, on which he had written the amount, "this verra dae we all must pack; for this is the last o' the daes o' grace agreed to i' the deed, and time is oop at twalve the dae. He says he'll be heer at haif-past eleven to gie us time to make payment in coin o' the realm or gould as agreed upon. He lached as he said it, the black souled scoondrel, an' I rhode back streicht awa'. It's aboon eleeven noo. What mun we do?"