Larrie was a fleet, wonderful runner. In the little cottage where they lived, manifold silver cups and mugs bore witness to it, and he was running for life now, but Dot nearly outstripped him.
She flew over the ground, hardly touching it, her arms were outstretched, her lips moving. They fell down together on their knees by their baby, just as three furious, hard-driven bullocks thundered by, filling the air with dust and bellowing.
[p 9]
]The baby was blinking happily up at a great fat golden beetle that was making a lazy way up the wattle. It had lost its ‘comforter’ and was sucking its thumb thoughtfully. It had kicked off its white knitted boots, and was curling its pink toes up in the sunshine with great enjoyment.
‘Baby!’ Larrie said. The big fellow was trembling in every limb.
‘Baby!’ said Dot. She gathered it up in her little shaking arms, she put her poor white face down upon it, and broke into such pitiful tears and sobs that it wept too. Larrie took them both into his arms, and sat down on a fallen tree. He soothed them, he called them a thousand tender, beautiful names; he took off Dot’s hat and stroked her little curls, he kissed his baby again and again; he kissed his wife. When they were all quite calm and the bullocks ten miles away, they started again.
‘I’ll carry him,’ said Larrie.
‘Ah no, let me,’ Dot said.
‘Darling, you’re too tired—see, you can hold his hand across my shoulder.’
[p 10]
]‘No, no, give him to me—my arms ache without him.’
‘But the hill—my big baby!’