Larrie was entertaining two bachelor friends and was holding a pipe with one side of his mouth, and with the other telling a late witticism of a Supreme Court judge. The men had come up about taking the cottage, and almost suspected a domestic crisis; Larrie’s forced spirits deceived no one but Dot in the shadow of the pepper trees.
She felt frozen with shame and horror. This was the man she would have humbled herself for! She turned to go back in silence the way she had come. But on the verandah there was a sudden movement; someone had discovered it was half-past eight, and being a Thursday evening the last train went down in eight minutes. They had their hats and sticks in ten seconds, and were halfway down the path. Larrie went with them.
[p 145]
]‘I’ll see you safe in,’ he said, ‘we’ll have to run for it.’ His shadow fell at Dot’s feet, then raced him down the road leading to the station.
Dot breathed freely once more, then with steady steps she went up the path and round the verandah to Peggie’s window.
The woman was on her knees by the bedside, reading the Bulletin by candlelight. She always abstracted it from the dining-room on Thursdays, the moment Larrie laid it down, for she had a strange passion for political caricatures, though to her knowledge she had never seen a Member of Parliament in her life. To-night she was convulsed over a minister of the crown portrayed in an eye-glass and ballet skirts.
Dot crept in through the back door and went on tiptoe down the hall to the second room there. She made a warm bundle of the baby with the cot blankets and a New Zealand rug, then she went out into the hall again, holding it close to her happy breast. Larrie had left the front door just ajar, so she [p 146] ]stole out noiselessly and walked down the path to the gate.
The next minute she was fleeing up the road again to her mother, the burden in her arms the lightest thing in the world.
[p 147]
]CHAPTER XIV
THE WHEEL IN THE BRAIN
‘Mine, mine—not yours,
It is not yours but mine,—give me the child’