"Yes," he said.
Davey and Mrs. Cameron drove away. Davey craned his neck, looking back along the road several times, and the last time he looked Deirdre was standing alone, an elfish figure outlined against the sunset.
"She can run, mother!" he cried, his eyes alight. "She can run and climb quicker than anybody I ever saw. P'raps—I believe she's a Pelling, mother! She's got the bright eyes and black hair."
"Maybe"—Mary Cameron said, smiling at his eagerness and belief in the old story, "maybe there's fairy blood in her veins."
CHAPTER IX
It was not long before a barn-like building of slatted shingles appeared in a clearing off the road, two or three miles below Steve's. It stood on log foundations, as if on account of its importance, and had a door at one end of its road-facing wall instead of in the middle, as ordinary houses had, and two windows with small square panes of glass stared out on the road.
Drovers and teamsters on the roads, as they passed, halted-up to listen to the children singing, and went on their way with oaths of admiration, throats and eyes aching sometimes at the memories and vivid pictures the sound brought them.
Behind the school was the bark-thatched hut which had been run up for the Schoolmaster to live in. Donald Cameron had given the plot of land for the school and he had promised to sell the Schoolmaster a few acres beside it, if he wanted to make use of his spare time to clear the land, put in a crop, or make a garden. Mr Farrel soon intimated that he did, and came to terms with Donald Cameron.
At first no more than a dozen children went to school. Some walked, others came tumbling into the clearing, two or three a-back of a stolid, jog-trotting, old horse, others arrived packed together in a spring-cart. At the back of the clearing was a fenced paddock into which the horses were turned during school hours.