"But we can get along without them, can't we?" Deirdre asked blithely. "There's no need for them to be sitting up trying to be polite, is there?"
"None at all."
McNab chuckled. He thought he was getting on very well with Deirdre and that she was playing him off against Conal and Davey in a spirit of pique.
"Right. Good-night, McNab, see you in the morning," Conal said angrily. He swung out of the room. Davey followed him.
"And now for the business that brought you, McNab. Mighty kind of you to have come after me with it?"
The Schoolmaster sat down before Thad McNab, facing him squarely, his one eye played on McNab's shifty face. There was just the faintest ironical emphasis in his voice.
McNab stirred uneasily.
"Fact is," he began, his eyes shifted under the Schoolmaster's gaze. "Fact is—we're wanting a school in the Wirree," he plunged desperately. "Before you go away I thought—I thought, not knowing exactly what your plans were, I'd have a talk to you about it. The place is gettin' a bad name with the children growing up not able to make more than a mark for their names. In the hills, of course, you taught the first generation, as you might say, so the older ones can teach the others coming on, but down there it's different. We've never had any school or school teachers. The people can't pay enough—just a few of them—to make it worth your while ... but if we built a school, got 'em all together ... it might be a good thing, I'd maybe put up the money for the school—maybe—"
He fidgeted in his seat. He did not want to commit himself too far, and yet he was irritably conscious of the weakness of his explanation unless he did. He had a suspicion than Dan Farrel was laughing at him up his sleeve too. An ill-humour was rising in him.
There was an ominous silence—a moment of suspicion and suspense. A word from either might have been a spark to the long-hidden train of enmity between them. Deirdre broke the silence. She threw down a pack of cards and pulled her chair up to the table.