'Humph!' he growled, and went to untie his horse, muttering, 'A pretty wife, a pretty wife!' to himself.
This particular afternoon Bart went off in high spirits, Challis watching him wistfully from the verandah.
Hermie was—oh, who knew where Hermie was? Wandering up and down among the roses perhaps, her eyes soft with tears—Challis had found her like that two or three times—or reading poetry in some quiet corner in the paddocks, or writing it in the secret solitude of her bedroom, or on Tramby's back riding, riding with dreamy eyes down the road to the sunset. Wherever she was, she did not want Challis.
Mrs. Cameron was with her husband. Up and down the path they walked, his arm round her waist, her hand in his, talking, talking a little of the future, not at all of the quivering past, mostly of the tender all-sufficing present. Challis, who had had such sweet monopoly of her mother for so long, missed it exceedingly now, while readily acquiescing that the turn for the others had come. She looked from the verandah with yearning eyes. It seemed months instead of weeks since she had poured all her hopes and imaginings and longings and queer little fancies into that ever-ready ear.
Roly? Roly was killing his Boers down in the paddock, or wheeling heavy loads of earth to make kopjes in the bush. He would tell her to 'clear out of the way of lyddite shells,' if she sought him out.
Floss? Floss, who hated a needle, was sitting on the grass making, with incredible labour, a pincushion for the mother she had begun to love with an almost fierce affection. Challis would have liked to go and help her, but the child, if she pricked her fingers till they were empty of blood, would have no stitch set in it that was not her own. Furthermore, all the dreams on the Utopia were dispersed. Challis had never buttoned one of the little girl's garments, never tied a sash, never brushed out a curl. The small woman had dressed herself independently ever since she was three, and indignantly scorned all help; she hated sashes—her straight light hair she raked herself. And though she accepted in an offhand fashion the toys Challis had chosen with such love and interest, she kept up an inexplicably warlike attitude towards her, and deprecated her on every possible occasion. Her hands—'Pooh! Well, I would be ashamed to have hands that colour! S'pose you never take your gloves off?' 'Frightened to walk in the bush 'cause of snakes! Well, some girls are ninnies!' 'Never been-on a horse—'fraid to get on Tramby! Why, she—Floss—had galloped all over on Tramby without a saddle when she was only four!'
Challis, sensitively aware of her own want of courage to explore and grow familiar with these bush things, got into the habit of shrinking away when Floss came on the scene.
There seemed no niche left for her in this home she had looked forward to; that was what it was. The place, rightly hers, had filled up entirely during her long absence.
No one understood her, or tried to. They took it for granted that her genius and her life abroad had lifted her to a higher plane than the one on which they themselves lived. It might be very cultivated and beautiful up there, but they were not familiar with it, and therefore did not take any interest in it.
The girl tried hard to get on to their plane, and be interested in their things; but they knew she was trying hard, and it merely irritated them. Let her stay where she belonged.