Yes, those were busy times indeed. There were the Fingo shearers to be set to their work and kept to it, wool bales to be pressed and sewn up, rationing to be attended to, and a hundred and one things, large or small, to tax the mind and employ the hand. Moreover, a sharp eye had to be kept on the natives aforesaid, lest in their laudable anxiety to make the largest possible tally, they should inflict grievous bodily harm upon the animals under operation, and haply remove the cuticle as well as the fleece. But those there employed were old hands at the craft, and gave no trouble to speak of. They would clip away by the hour, chatting among themselves in that seemingly disjointed way wherein these people are wont to exchange gossip. Now and then they varied the pastime by humming a barbarous tune on about three notes, whose terrible monotony would be distracting were it not that the ear gets accustomed to the wretched crooning, even as to the hum of a threshing machine or the ticking of an obtrusive clock, but through this, as through all other sounds, the clip, clip, clip of the shears went steadily on, from morning till night, from day to day.
“I’ve just had another letter from Lilian Strange,” said Mrs Brathwaite, one evening towards the close of the busy time above mentioned.
“What does she say?” asked the old settler, who was nodding in a roomy arm-chair, tired with the heat and exertion of the day.
“She says she won’t be able to come to us this week after all, because the McColls have put off their start. She may have to wait another ten days in consequence.”
“H’m. Don’t know that it isn’t just as well. It would have been difficult to send for her during shearing time—means two days away from home. Hicks might have gone to fetch her, or Arthur, but they are both wanted here. Naylor’s busy, too, and so is Jim. Yes, it’s just as well, as things go.”
“She thinks she will have an opportunity in about a fortnight, which will save us the trouble of sending.”
“Well, that’s better still. Besides, who’s going to bring her?”
“She doesn’t say,” answered Mrs Brathwaite. “She only promises to let us know.”
To one, at least, of the auditors of this dialogue, the postponement of the expected guest’s arrival was not a source of unmixed grief. That one was Ethel. She would not own to herself that so commonplace a failing as jealousy had anything to do with it; still the fact remained that they were all very jolly together as it was. “Two’s company, three’s a bore,” applies in principle to circles, and now it was horribly likely that this Miss Strange would be, from Ethel’s point of view, de trop. Her aunt had spoken in warm terms of the other’s beauty and attractiveness. But Ethel herself was conscious of the possession of a larger share of those commodities than most people. Had the other been of the colourless and inane order she could have tolerated her—bore as she might be. As matters stood, however, it was not in feminine human nature that Ethel should be prepared to welcome the unexpected guest with open arms.
“What has become of Arthur?” asked Mrs Brathwaite, as they sat down to supper.