“John William was quite sure of it.”
“Then—I suppose—he never thought of looking for me? No, of course he wouldn't. Why should he?”
“You—you could hardly expect it, dear, I think,” said John William's sister, very gently.
“Hardly; what a cracked thing it was to say!” cried Missy, laughing down the wistful tone into which she had dropped. “But you none of you could have guessed much about my life there, if you thought I was likely to go straight back to Melbourne from here. No, and you can't have known what it was to me to have lived here for two months, even as a cheat and a liar. There's worse things than cheating and lying, 'Bella; there's things that cheating and lying's a healthy change after! But never mind all that. When I left you, and had got through the township, I didn't take the road to Melbourne at all; I took the other road. Bang ahead of me was them Dandenong Ranges that your dear old father's always looking at as he sits at the table. I wonder does he look at 'em as much as ever? So I said, 'Them ranges is the place for me;' and I stumped for them ranges straight away. I swopped dresses with a woman I met on the road; this is the rags of what I got for mine; and then I stopped at all the farms asking for work. How I got work, after ever so long, and all about it, I'd tell you if you weren't in such a hurry to go. You'll get wet, you know, and here you're as dry as a bone. But I suppose it's only natural!”
“It isn't natural, Missy, and it isn't true,” said Arabella, earnestly. “Oh, if only you understood everything! As if I could ever forget what you did for me—in this very paddock!”
“It was under this very tree, for that matter,” said Missy, with a laugh. “I found it easily enough, and I was standing under it for old acquaintance when you came along. Do you know what he got?”
Arabella hung her head, because in the Argus she had read his sentence, to whom once she had been prepared to commit body and soul. She did not answer; but in her anxiety to be good to Missy, she forgot that other anxiety concerning her brother.
“If only you would come into the house, and let me give you some dry things and some supper! You must need both; and you have no idea how clear the coast is. You don't understand!”
“What is it that I don't understand?” asked Missy, pertinently. “You keep on saying that.”
“It is my mother—you never asked after her. She is very ill. She is—on her deathbed.”