"That won't undo this morning's mischief. I heard what the brutes said to you!"
"Then you must have heard what I said to them. Don't try to make me out worse than I am, Monty."
She laid her hand upon his arm, and Engelhardt, to his horror, saw tears on her lashes. Gilroy, however, would not look at her. Instead, he hailed the store-keeper, who had passed them on his way to the huts.
"Make out Simons's account, Sandy," he shouted at the top of his voice, "and give him his check. Miss Pryse has thought fit to sack him over my head!"
Instantly her penitence froze to scorn.
"That was unnecessary," she said, in the same quiet tone she had employed toward the shearer, but dropping her arm and halting dead as she spoke. "If this is the way you treat the men, no wonder you can't manage them. Come, Mr. Engelhardt!"
And with this they turned their back on the manager, but not on the shed; that was not Naomi's way at all. She was pre-eminently one to be led, not driven, and she remained upon the scene, showing Engelhardt everything, and explaining the minutest details for his benefit, much longer than she would have dreamt of staying in the ordinary course of affairs. This involved luncheon in the manager's hut, at which meal Naomi appeared in the highest spirits, cracking jokes with Sanderson, chaffing the boy in spectacles, and clinking pannikins with everyone but the manager himself. The latter left early, after steadily sulking behind his plate, with his beard in his waistcoat and his yellow head presented like a bull's. Tom Chester was not there at all. Engelhardt was sorry, though the others treated him well enough to-day—Sanderson even cutting up his meat for him. It was three o'clock before Naomi and he started homeward in the old Shanghai.
With the wool-shed left a mile behind, they overtook a huge horseman leading a spare horse.
"That's our friend Simons," said Naomi. "I wonder what sort of a greeting he'll give me. None at all, I should imagine."
She was wrong. The shearer reined up on one side of the track, and gave her a low bow, wide-awake in hand, and with it a kind of a glaring grin that made his teeth stand out like brass-headed nails in the afternoon sunshine. Naomi laughed as they drove on.