“Then you will be in a continual state of fear. All the rivers on the Peninsula are alive with them, and I have lost hundreds of cattle by the brutes.” Then he laughed. “But they won't get many this year.”
“How bravely he takes his misfortunes,” she thought. Then she said, “Well, I shall take good care of myself, and not cross any creeks if the water is not clear. Now here we are at the pool. Isn't it lovely and quiet? I do hope we shall have caught enough fish by the time father comes.”
Gerrard, as he filled his pipe, watched her smooth, slender brown hands baiting the hook of her line with a small grasshopper, and noted the beautiful contour of her features, and the intent expression in her long-lashed eyes as she surveyed it. She looked up.
“Now, Mr Gerrard what are you doing? Don't be so lazy. I'll have at least three fish before you have your line ready. Oh, I do wish I were a man!”
“Why?”
“Because then I could smoke a pipe when I am fishing. It must be delightful! When father and Sam Young and Cockney Smith come here with me to fish, and I see them all looking so placidly content with their pipes in their mouths, I feel as if I was missing something. Now, watch!”
She made a cast with her light rod of bamboo, and almost at the same moment that the impaled grasshopper fell upon the glassy surface of the pool it was seized by a fish of the grayling species; known to Queenslanders as “speckled trout.”
“There you are!” she cried triumphantly, as she swung the silvery-scaled beauty out of the water, and deftly grasped it with her left hand. “First to me.”
The music of her laugh, and her bright, animated features, filled Gerrard with delight as he watched her make a second cast. Then he too set to work, and, for the next quarter of an hour, they vied to make the greatest catch. Gerrard was a long way behind, when Douglas Fraser appeared. He was saying over and over again to himself: “There is nothing between her and Aulain! there is nothing between them!” Then, as he put his hand to his scarred face, the wild elation in his heart died away.