Then just when the old wearying search for work was starting again, the silent man found a similar [140] ]position, though at a smaller salary, in a far-away country town.
Away they went with the boxes and bags that held everything they could call their own in all this new strange continent.
They unpacked their possessions and prepared to settle down to life under this fresh aspect. But in two months came a startling blow—the country firm went bankrupt. Not one penny of her salary for those eight weeks could the widow obtain, and in addition she was forced to sustain all the travelling expenses which, it had been promised, would be reimbursed to her.
“Write to Mr. Blair, mama,” said Phyl hopefully at this crisis; “he’ll soon find you something to do.”
But even this help was now cut off; the silent man had written a letter to the widow since she had been in this inland town and begged her to return and marry him; he found it impossible to fill the blank her absence caused.
Mrs. Conway sighed deeply as she wrote her gentle but decided refusal; this good plain man’s advice had been of such service to her, and now she could no longer ask it.
Then while still in the little town and looking almost hopelessly towards the return to Sydney, the local house-agent, with whom she had had some transactions, approached her.
He had a cottage to let in a small township not [141] ]more than fifty miles away; there was an excellent opening, he said, for a good private school there; indeed, excepting a half-time public school there was no other for miles around.
Mrs. Conway eagerly adopted the suggestion; teaching seemed delightful work after these five months of “spirit-breaking,” and hitherto she had been afraid to attempt a school because, in every instance she had inquired about, a heavy sum had been necessary for the purchase. But here was, as the agent said, a town with a population of five thousand souls and not a single private school; and here was to let a comfortable cottage with two acres of garden and five rooms for the ridiculous rent of fifteen shillings a week.
Mrs. Conway signed the lease for a year—the agent professed himself unable to let for a shorter period—and she spent some of her hoarded “safety money” in the purchase of the necessary piano and furniture.