Then the cow felt better in all probability, for there was no sign of the calf being stunned with a club to be cooked for a holiday, the performers of the dance stepping lightly to the door, out of which Bungarolo peered cautiously before dropping down upon his breast and crawling rapidly off to the garden fence, without disturbing the two collies, though Nibbler, who lay as if asleep, opened one eye, lifted his tail, and brought it down with a rap and closed the eye again.
He opened it, though, twice more as the other two blacks passed him in the same way, gave two more sharp raps with his tail, and then sniffed at the last black as if wondering how he would taste. But as he had had a pretty good piece of a drowned sheep, he subsided and closed the eye, not even turning his head to gaze after the three blacks as they glided on right under the fence on the side farthest from the house, and close by where old Sam was contentedly digging, in perfect unconsciousness that the three great children were off to the bush for a jovial day, hunting for fat grubs, honey, snakes, and other picnic delicacies in the glorious open wilds.
Half an hour had passed, during which Brookes went to the door of the wood-shed three times to scowl at Leather; but the convict was hard at work at the end of the wood-yard, chopping away at rails which he was splitting, tapering at the ends and piling on a heap, ready for some fencing that was to be done as soon as there was a little time.
Brookes felt ill-used. He would have liked to find the assigned servant yawning and doing nothing, or taking advantage of the master’s absence to have a nap, and give
him cause, as he was in his own estimation head man now, to let loose his tongue at the man he hated intensely.
But there was no excuse, and Brookes went back into the shed.
“I shall catch him yet,” he muttered. “Only let him give me a chance.”
But Brookes could not rest. He pitched the soft bundled-up fleeces about irritably, for they annoyed him. He wanted something hard, and growing more restless from a desire to show his authority, he went to where the two blacks should have been cleaning out the cow-shed.
Brookes had come out of the blinding sunshine, and the shed was dark and cool. He did not see the blacks, but he was not surprised, for their faces would naturally assimilate with the gloom.