‘Come in at last,
Inside the melancholy little house
We built to be so gay with.’
It was raining again, and there was that sound of wind in the trees that only the Australian bush knows. Eastward, stars were out in the sky, but, from the south, blue-grey masses were drifting up to the low rain cloud that had put out all the lights of the southern cross, and only left the two pale pointers. An hour ago the sky had been blue, for there was a great moon, but now the rain had washed all the colour out of it, and it was dull grey with midnight cloud banks. On the cottage roof and in the garden there [p 112] ]were patches of pale light from the drenched moon, but all the bush beyond was black as death.
‘Don’t come in,’ Dot said.
She leaped down from her seat before Wooster could put down the reins to open the gate and drive in.
‘She’ll get wet,’ the mother cried.
But the white figure went hurrying up the drive, all its long silken train down on the wet gravel.
There was a lamp alight in the drawing room, and a circle of white from it lay on a pool at the end of the verandah. But the long French windows were closed. Dot beat on the window panes with wet fingers.
‘We may as well get home,’ said the mother, seeing her safe. But Wooster only picked up the reins.