The Rider of Waroona

by G. Firth Scott

"Twenty pounds a week," Gale replied, without moving a muscle, even when Wallace flared up at the proposal.

"Utterly preposterous," he cried. "Ten shillings a week was what was allowed her. That amount is ample."

"You are the buyer, not the seller, Mr. Wallace. You pay twenty pounds a week, or the furniture goes. Even at that sum I consider that Mrs. Eustace is placing the Bank under a distinct obligation to her."

There was no escape; reluctantly Wallace admitted it, and agreed to the terms, humiliating though they were. But it was still more humiliating for him to learn the following day that Mrs. Eustace declined to accept anything whatever, but allowed the Bank to use the furniture and retain the services of Bessie until other arrangements could be made.

"What is the game she is playing?" he said to Harding. "Is it all part of some elaborate scheme between herself and her husband, or is she really sincere?"

The letter sewn into the lining of his coat seemed to burn itself into Harding's back. Was it all part of an elaborate scheme, part of the "everything" she had to do "as arranged"? If he could only be sure!

"I don't know what to make of it," he answered. "I don't know." But while they were speculating at the bank as to the sincerity or insincerity of Mrs. Eustace, she was driving her own troubles from her mind by the constant and unremitting care of a taciturn and exacting patient.

For the first two or three days after the bullet was extracted from his leg, Dudgeon was in a high state of fever. In his semi-delirium he babbled incessantly of Kitty, grew dangerously excited whenever the doctor came near him, and would only be pacified by the presence of Mrs. Eustace. In his lucid intervals he told her over and over again the story of his betrayal; when his mind wandered, he regarded her as the Kitty he had known before the shattering of his life's romance. It was difficult for her to decide which experience was the more trying.

Later, when the fever left him, he was as a child in her hands, listening while she read or talked to him, taking anything she brought him without demur, and only showing signs of impatience when she left the hut for a while.

Consequently, she was unable to give any attention to Durham, and as the days slipped by the doctor began to chafe, for there were patients scattered through the bush whom he was anxious to visit, but he could not go away and leave both men to Mrs. Eustace to nurse.