The Lomax children took a keen interest in the warfare, and always asked Larkin, when he came for orders in the morning, how many of the new people’s custom he had secured.
For it was Larkin’s trick of insinuating himself among the portmanteaus and confused servants and children, and then talking rapidly of bacon and letters, that had gained him Mrs. Lomax’s custom when the family first came to Burunda. That bewildered lady simply had to consent that he might call to get him out of the knot of seemingly [p14] inextricable confusion with which she had to deal.
There are two photographers, two shoe-menders, two house agents, two visiting doctors.
It is conceivable that if a third man of any trade come along the character of business in Burunda may entirely change. But while there are but two of each, the chances are that any day the visitors may have the quiet monotony of the place broken up by a civil war.
Not far from the station stand the hotels and the more modest boarding-houses.
And then begin the cottages and villas—nearly all of them weatherboard—of people who like to have a foothold a few thousand feet in the air when summer’s shroud of damp enwraps the Harbour city.
The Lomax children swung disconsolately on the gate of their summer home. All they could see was the road in front of them, now clear, now filled with flying mist, and their senses were wearied of it.
Might they go down the gully?
No, they might not go down the gully. Who had time on a busy day like this, and Miss Bibby writing to New Zealand, to go trapesing down all those rough places with them?
Couldn’t they go alone?