The drawing under discussion was a water-colour sketch of the house and its immediate surroundings. He would treasure it as a reminder after he had gone, he declared, when asking her to undertake it. To which she had rejoined mischievously that he seemed in a great hurry to talk about “after he had gone,” considering that he had only just come.
Now the entrance of George Bayfield and his youngest born put an end to the discussion, and soon they sat down to supper.
“Man, Mr Blachland, but that is a mooi buck,” began the boy. “Jafta says he never saw a mooi-er one.”
“Perhaps it’ll bring you luck,” said Lyn, looking exceedingly reposeful and sweet, behind the tea-things, in her twenty-year-old dignity at the head of the table.
“I don’t know,” was the reply. “I did something once that was supposed to bring frightful ill-luck, and for a long time it seemed as if it was going to. But—indirectly it had just the opposite effect.”
“Was that up-country, Mr Blachland?” chimed in the boy eagerly. “Do tell us about it.”
“Perhaps some day, Fred. But it’s a thing that one had better have left alone.”
“These children’ll give you no peace if you go on raising their curiosity in that way,” said Bayfield.
“I’ll go up-country when I’m big,” said the boy. “Are you going again, Mr Blachland?”
“I don’t know, Fred. You see, I’ve only just come down.”