There was a sandal wood writing-table, with silver handles and silver equipments, a silver lamp with a rose-leaf shade, and a photo of baby in a silver chased frame.
There was not a tambourine on the walls, not a single fan pocket, not a plaque. Half-a-dozen pictures perhaps, bits of exquisite colouring chiefly in long narrow gold frames; a sunset at Manly Lagoon, a bit of the Kanimbla valley, with summer upon it, a water colour of the road above Mossman’s Bay, a woman’s face, pale and unspeakably beautiful, painted against a background of purple velvet, some chrysanthemums, tawny yellow and brown.
One or two engravings as well. ‘Wedded’ in an oak frame hung over the piano. Dot said the man was Larrie’s very counterpart; when she sang she used to look up at it and feel glad he was her husband. On a tall [p 25] ]easel on a table there was the ‘Peacemaker.’ Larrie said the little girl was Dot. There were bits of quaint china on the little tables, and a few photographs, not many. Flowers there were in all possible places. Daffodils and spiky leaves in the windows, roses and ‘shivery’ grass on the tables, low vases of violets and primroses, tall ones of jonquils. Dot dusted this room herself every morning, then before she could put the duster away, the piano would tempt her, and the rest of the house be forgotten. But for Peggie what a place it would have been!
Peggie was a real Cornstalk. She was fully five-feet-eleven, and had impossibly long arms and an impossible number of freckles. But she had also all a Cornstalk’s warm, honest heart; she was devoted to Dot and Larrie, and absolutely worshipped the baby. She made no better a servant as far as work went, than the average untrained Australian girl; but she was wonderfully learned in the ways and wants of babyhood, and so was invaluable to Dot who was absurdly ignorant. When [p 26] ]Larrie had engaged her twelve months ago at a Sydney registry office, he had asked her name.
‘Marjorie
Dorothy Pegerton,’ she said.
‘Ah!’ said Larrie, ‘that’s a high day and holiday name, shall we say Mary on week days?’
‘Marjie, some folks call me,’ she answered. ‘Or there’s Dolly—I’m not particular—you can even call me Peg if you like, Mr—what was it the gentleman said your name was?’
‘Armitage,’ said Larrie, ‘and let us decide on Peggie; it is unique, and altogether charming in these days.’
They were both very fond of Peggie, she was the stay of the cottage in all domestic affairs—it would have fallen to pieces but for her, and the baby—well there is really no knowing what would have happened to that same baby had it not been for Peggie.