But Ess asked the boss to drive through it, and laughed like a child at the splash of the horses’ feet and the water running dripping off the wheels.
About noon the clouds banked up rapidly, and the rain commenced to fall—really to fall—straight and heavy and drenching, till the gutters spouted and little rivulets ran foaming down the garden walks. It drummed fiercely on the roof and swept roaring down on the foliage of the trees. It rained so for half an hour, and then slackened to a thin drizzle and stopped.
A couple of hours after a buggy splashed up to the gate, and Dolly Grey came squelching up the path. He was dripping but immensely cheerful, and he stood out in the verandah and waited for the boss, and gave him Scottie’s message that they had had a shower in the hills, and there was word from the township of the river being up further up country, and would he say if Scottie was to go on bringing the sheep down, or would he wait and hold them in the back pastures or the hills yet a little.
And the boss called Ess, who had walked to the end of the verandah when he came out to Dolly Grey, and asked her. “Tell me, Miss Lincoln—will we have more rain or not? Will I bring the sheep down or hold them? It’s all a toss-up whether it comes more rain or not, and you seem to be a good prophet.”
He was half laughing, but Ess was very grave, and answered him straight and unhesitatingly. “It’s going to rain, and rain, and rain. There, I’ve told you.”
The boss chuckled deep in his throat and turned to Dolly. “You hear,” he said. “Tell Mackellar that I have it on good authority that it is going to rain, and rain, and rain, so—hold the sheep meantime.” He turned to Ess. “Will you get him some tea, Miss Lincoln, and bring a little table out and have a cup with him? He won’t like to come in soaking like that, I suppose.”
“Mr. Sinclair,” she said suddenly, “I want to go back to the Ridge with him if you’ll let me. I was with them there all through the dry and the cruel heat and the rest, and I want to be with them in this—this glorious rain.”
“You’re so sure of more rain,” he said quizzically. “But, yes, of course you can go. I’ll be missing you, but if you’re a true prophet, I’ll be having my own women folk up to cheer me in my solitude again,” and he turned to the house with something more than the wet of the rain in his eyes.
She ran and packed her things while Dolly drank his tea, and was down again before he had finished. The boss had waited to see her off. “You’re getting a real out-backer,” he said. “Pack and ready for a twenty-mile drive as easy as a town girl goes down town to shop. Take my big waterproof with you. Happen you might get another shower. Is it easy crossing the billabong yet, Grey?”
“Quite easy, sir,” said Dolly. “Not up to the horses’ knees.”