"It'll be a couple of hours to moonrise after dark," Conal said restively, glancing at the waning sky. "If you could keep him busy, playing cards and drinking—let him think we weren't upset at seeing him and he Seems to be settlin' down and looking foolish findin' we're all about—I might walk out after a bit. I could get the beasts, with Davey and that blithering half-breed. Sally's easily worth a couple of men with cattle."
"Do you think I'm likely to be able to keep McNab so busy, he wouldn't notice you were walking out?" the Schoolmaster asked, impatiently. "You and Davey had better come in and hang round loose presently."
He went towards the house.
His greeting of McNab was as lukewarm, negligent and friendly as it always was. Deirdre saw no flicker of anxiety in his face. McNab's eyes were quick and keen on it for the first few minutes, but finding no trace of repressed excitement, not a spark of the impatience he expected, but only a whimsical smile to convey that the Schoolmaster knew why he had come, and was amused at the reason, he dropped into the chair he had taken and sought to cover the unexpectedness of his visit by unusual affability.
He was sitting in Steve's chair by the fire when Farrel came into the room that was kitchen, dining-room, sitting-room, and living-room in general at Steve's. Deirdre slipped out with a jug for water as the Schoolmaster came in. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw her talking to Conal in the yard.
When she returned, her laughter and gaiety surprised him. She set a jug of grog between Steve and McNab on the table near NcNab's elbow. The Schoolmaster swore beneath his breath when he saw McNab's eyes on her.
He trembled with rage when he heard Deirdre talking to McNab; but her eyes met his reassuringly. He caught their message, calm and purposeful. He knew that she was playing the woman to McNab, and why. The knowledge angered and humiliated him.
Davey and Conal came into the long, barely-lighted room. They threw themselves on a bench near the door. Conal, taking a pipe from his belt, smoked morosely. Davey did not look at McNab, and McNab took no notice of him, enjoying his position of importance by the fireside, and chuckling over the gay chatter Deirdre threw to him.
"We eat our heads off, up here, Mr. McNab," she said. "And sleep! Davey and Conal there, to see them yawning over their supper to-night you'd think they'd never seen a bed for weeks. They've been saying they're going to turn in early because they've to go off mustering first thing in the morning, and father and Steve would have sat here dozing by the fire for a while, and then gone off to bed too. I was thinking I would have to take out my sewing and talk to the cat ... till it was a decent hour to be saying my prayers. But now p'raps you'll have a game of cards with me, though I don't suppose Conal and Davey'll go to bed early now, seeing we've got company."
Davey sat bolt upright against the wall. It froze the blood in his veins to hear her on such terms of easy familiarity with McNab. Conal shifted uneasily.