For more than a minute Missy remained speechless, while the fall of the rain on leaf and blade seemed all at once to have grown very loud. Then she shook her head firmly.
“I am so sorry for you all; but it's all the more reason why I mustn't come in. If she were well, I daren't.”
They argued the matter. The want of food was admitted; that of dry clothes, obvious.
“If you would only come as far as the cart-shed; there's not the least chance of anyone going there till Old Willie does at two o'clock in the morning; and there I could bring you some supper and a change as well. If you would only do that,” Arabella urged, “it would be something.”
“You would promise not to tell a soul?”
“I do promise.”
“Not even John William?”
Arabella remembered her forgotten anxiety. “Certainly not John William,” said she, emphatically. And Missy gave in at last.
Five minutes later they stood, wet and dripping, in the cart-shed. It was one of the many more or less ramshackle shanties which stood around the homestead yard. It had a galvanised iron roof, a back and two sides of wattle and dab, and no front at all. And no sooner had the two women gained this shelter than a man's voice calling through the rain caused them to cling instinctively together. The man was John William, and, low as his voice was purposely pitched, the words carried clear and clean into the cart-shed.
“'Bella! 'Bella! Where are you, 'Bella?”