‘I—’ said Dot, ‘
I—think I shall go home.’ She jumped up and peeped through the Venetian. ‘Baby may want me, and—and—if Larrie should happen to come in, you needn’t say I’ve been; he thinks I walk too much.’
She gave her mother a hurried kiss on the top of her cap, and slipped out of the back door and across the paddocks to the train.
Larrie came down the hall with slow step. He sat down in Dot’s old rocking-chair. ‘Morning, mum,’ he said, ‘the oranges are looking lovely.’ He was eating one he had plucked near the gate, but did not seem to be paying any attention to the taste of it.
The little mother regarded him with eyes full of severity, though she tried to hide it.
‘Dot is not looking well,’ she said, ‘haven’t you noticed? We mustn’t let her do too much, we must be very careful of her, Larrie boy.’
[p 37]
]Larrie looked a trifle disturbed for a minute, then righteous wrath prevailed over incipient anxiety. ‘Why she doesn’t do anything,’
he said, ‘anything.’
‘She’s very young,’ was the mother’s reply.
‘Oh, that’s nothing,’ said Larrie ‘lots of girls of eighteen are married and do everything.’