Paul hummed and talked of the music he was going to play as they went along. He called to Sam Nancarrow's old nag, quite pleased to be having a horse to drive as though it belonged to him, and gossiped genially about this and other balls he had been to.
Sophie kept remembering what Mrs. Grant and Mrs. George Woods had said, and how she had looked in those glimpses of herself in the mirror. "I do look nice! I do look nice!" she assured herself.
It was wonderful to be going to a ball at Warria. She had never thought she could look as she did in this new frock, with her necklace, and Mrs. Woods' ear-rings, and that old sash of her mother's. She was a little anxious, but very happy and excited.
She remembered how Arthur had looked at her when she met him on the road or in the paddock sometimes, She only had on her old black dress then. He must like her in this new dress, she thought. Her mind had a subtle recoil from the too great joy of thinking how much more he must like her in this pretty, new, white frock; she sat in a delicious trance of happiness. Her father hummed and gossiped. All the stars came out. The sky was a wonderful blue where it met the horizon, and darkened to indigo as it climbed to the zenith.
When they drove from the shadow of the coolebahs which formed an avenue from the gate of the home paddock to the veranda of the homestead, Ted Burton, the station book-keeper, a porky, good-natured little man, with light, twinkling eyes, whose face looked as if it had been sand-papered, came out to meet them.
"There you are, Rouminof!" he said. "Glad to see you. We were beginning to be afraid you weren't coming!"
Sophie got down from the buggy, and her father drove off to the stables. Passing the veranda steps with Mr. Burton, she glanced up. Several men were on the steps. Her eyes went instinctively to Arthur Henty, who was standing at the foot of them, a yellow puppy fawning at his feet. He did not look up as Sophie passed, pretending to be occupied with the pup. But in that fleeting glance her brain had photographed the bruise on his forehead where it had caught a veranda post when Bully Bryant, having regained his feet, hit out blindly.
Potch had told Sophie what happened—she had made him find out in order to tell her. Arthur and Bully had wanted to fight, but after the first exchange of blows the men had held them back. Bully was mad drunk, they said, and would have hammered Henty to pulp. And the next evening Bully came to Sophie, heavy with shame, and ready to cry for what he had done.
"If anybody'd 've told me I'd treat you like that, Sophie, I'd 've killed him," he said. "I'd 've killed him.... You know how I feel about you—you know how we all feel about you—and for me to have served you like that—me that'd do anything in the world for you.... But it's no good trying to say any more. It's no good tryin' to explain. It's got me down...."
He sat with his head in his hands for a while, so ashamed and miserable, that Sophie could not retain her wrath and resentment against him. It was like having a brother in trouble and doing nothing to help him, to see Bully like this.