The lad looked miserable. How could he give up such a holiday? Yet how allow Howie an uncontested victory with the latest stranger?
Max and Muffie had run back along the path in pursuit of a lively lizard. Only Lynn and Pauline, their sweet little faces ashine with sympathy, hung on the gate.
The lad blurted out his highest hope to them. He gave his mother his wages, of course, he told them, but he had been saving up his commissions for a special purpose. He wanted to put “a bit of stuff” on the Melbourne Cup.
“I know I’ll win,” he said, with glistening eyes. “It’ll be five hundred at least,—p’raps a cool thou,—then I’ll buy Octavius and Septimus out, and mother and the old man shall chuck up that dirty selection, and come [p30] an’ get all the custom here. And the kids can go to school, an’ I’ll get Polly an’ Blarnche a pianner.” The rapt look of the visionary was on his face.
But he was torn with the conflict; it was plain he must give up either his holiday or his commission on the new “stranger.”
Pauline’s position as eldest had developed her naturally resourceful and intrepid disposition.
“Larkin,” she said, “I’ve thought what to do. You go and see your mother. We’ll get you the new man’s custom. And before Howie gets a chance of it.”
Then Anna appeared on the verandah, ringing the lunch bell violently, and Larkin rode home his dead lame horse, and Pauline marched into the house with her head up, the other children following and clamouring to be told of her great plan.
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