“The horse told him, I suppose.” Margot spoke quietly. “You see, it’s all very well to say that gipsies tell lies. Perhaps they do. But it was one of the old Bush people—the ‘blacks,’ they call them out there—who taught Long Jake how to whisper to the horses. Long Jake said that, compared to them, he knew nothing about it, really. It was ... because they loved horses that they could do it, Long Jake said; and it was only, I suppose, because he felt so horribly sorry for the horse that he simply had to try to see what he could do. The ‘blacks’ know much more than that, too. They know all sorts of woodcraft secrets about tracking and trailing, things you wouldn’t understand here in schools.” Margot broke off.

“Well, did Long Jake learn about them?” inquired Stella.

“Yes, the ‘blacks’ taught him a lot. He beat out a fire once, that had got started in the scrub in the hot weather and might have meant awful damage—you see, the Bush was so near. He had some method that the ‘blacks’ had taught him. And he knew a way of making fires, too, that he’d learned from them. A big cane, pointed at one end, and with its point placed inside a hole made in another cane. Then he twirled the point round and round inside the hole; and smoke came, and then fire. He did that while we were camping, and it quite dazzled me—his quickness, I mean. But he said the ‘blacks’ could do it ten times quicker. Oh, and that time I was lost in the Bush. I’d have been fifty times more frightened if I hadn’t remembered something he’d told me. ‘Always bear to the left; and think of that and nothing else,’ he’d said. Well, I did; and I found my way back to the water-hole where we’d been camping. Only, of course, they’d left it to look for me. It was lovely to see them coming back!”

“What was it like—being lost?” inquired Josy.

“Oh, it was only for two hours, you know; but it seemed far, far longer. There wasn’t anything, exactly, to be afraid of. What made you feel so dreadfully queer was the ‘great hush’ in the Bush; that’s what they call it. The feeling of the bigness, you know, and the dreadful quietness all round you. But you can grow to love it, too; the ‘hush’ of the Bush, I mean—not being lost, of course. People like that old hermit just can’t go away. ‘The Bush takes them’—that’s what Long Jake said.”

CHAPTER VIII
PLANS FOR BEING BRAVE

MARGOT had felt very much subdued during her first days at the Cliff School; there was no doubt about it. The events of the first evening and her interview with Miss Read had had their effect, and the new idea that had dawned upon her then—that it would be necessary to consider herself one of many and a small one at that, instead of being the one and only prime mover at home—had not been an easy one. The independent little girl from Australia had felt shy and rather sensitive in her new surroundings. Until her recital of the doings of Long Jake, Margot’s voice had hardly been heard, even in the dormitory. On that occasion, however, she had thrown all selfconsciousness to the winds, and had burst into the conversation with her old fervour.

Gretta had understood Margot’s mood pretty well, and had refrained from showing her sympathy, knowing that her cousin would “feel all right in the end.” She herself was living more intensely than she had ever lived before through every minute of this very new kind of life, and—but for the home-sick feeling that voiced itself in her first letter to the doctor, when she “wished he could be here too!”—there was no fly in the ointment to spoil her enjoyment of school.

As for Sybil, she had begun to settle in easily enough; already she had made and broken and re-made various friendships with other small girls; already she had been snubbed and smiled at alternately by the older girls, and had sulked or smiled back engagingly in return. She had already, although this was only the fourth day of term, experienced her first “returned lesson,” and—after the thrill of pride in such a distinction had passed into a feeling of self-pity at having to re-write such a “perfectly-good” exercise—she had then forgotten all about the matter; that is, until it was brought to her notice again somewhat forcibly by the mistress who had set, but had not received, the said imposition. She was adopting, however, along with the school slang, some of the orderly manners and ways of the Cliff School girls; Gretta wondered at this Sybil, so carefully pigtailed, so well brushed and neat after a week of nurse’s stern regime, and felt that now only one thing remained to come before her happiness should be complete; she had not yet had the first of the promised violin lessons!

These would be, said Miss Slater—who had spoken to the child herself about the music arrangements desired by Mrs. Fleming—on every Monday evening, and the first of the course would be given in the following week. “Your aunt says that she hopes much for your music, Gretta,” explained the head mistress, “and so I am to see whether Monsieur Villon, our French master, will think it worth his while to give lessons to so young a girl as you are.” Miss Slater had heard a good deal from Mrs. Fleming about the home life of the little Greys, and she felt a particular interest in the children for that reason. “Are you fond of playing?” she asked kindly.