“I wonder if she'll have her mother's hazel eyes and gentle voice?” mused the farmer aloud, with his eyes on their way back to the Dandenong Ranges.
“I should like her to take after her mother; she was one of the gentlest little women that ever I knew, was Mrs. Oliver, and I never clapped eyes——”
The speaker suddenly turned his head; there had been a step in the verandah, and some person had passed the window too quick for recognition.
“Who was that?” said Mr. Teesdale.
“I hardly saw,” said Arabella, pushing back her chair. “It was a woman.”
“And now she's knocking! Run and see who it is, my dear.”
Arabella rose and ran. Then followed such an outcry in the passage that Mr. Teesdale rose also. He was on his legs in time to see the door flung wide open, and the excited eyes of Arabella reaching over the shoulder of the tall young woman whom she was pushing into the room.
“Here is Miriam,” she cried. “Here's Miriam found her way out all by herself!”