"It will not come near here," Mrs. Dickson answered. "No fire ever has yet. The men always turn out and stop it. That must be where Willy is. I knew there was something when he did not come back. He is out fighting it and saving the run. We need not be afraid."
"I don't know," Ailleen answered uneasily.
The air was becoming heavier and hotter every moment, and as she looked, she saw how much nearer the massed clouds of smoke were rolling.
"You need not be afraid," Mrs. Dickson went on. "You may be sure Willy is out with all the men he can muster, and they are keeping it back from the paddocks. Willy is such a brave boy; and besides, he would do anything rather than that harm should come to you."
"All the same I think I'll saddle——"
"Why do you never listen to what I say about Willy?" the blind woman interrupted. "You know how anxious he is, and how he is always seeking to please you. He is such a good boy, too. He would make——"
"I'd rather not talk about it, Mrs. Dickson," Ailleen interrupted.
She was growing impatient of the constant reference which the blind woman made to Willy and his excellent qualities, and his sadness at her distant bearing towards him.
"I cannot bear to have him unhappy," the elder woman said, sticking loyally to the task the crafty youth had set her of softening the obdurate girl to an appreciation of him and a recognition of his possibilities as a suitor for her affections.
Ailleen, glancing round the smoke-bedimmed horizon, caught sight of the figure of a man riding hastily across the paddock towards the house.