“Tired?—no,” said Tommy. “I was very hungry, but that is getting better. And Norah is going to show me Billabong, so I could not possibly dream of being tired.”
“If Norah means to show you all Billabong before dark, she'll have to hurry,” said Jim lazily. “Don't you let yourself be persuaded into anything so desperate, Tommy.”
“Don't you worry; I'll give her graduated doses,” Norah said. “I'll watch the patient carefully, and see if there is any sign of strength failing. When do you begin to teach Bob to run a station?”
“I never saw anyone in such a hurry,” said Jim. “Why, the poor beggar hasn't had his tea yet—give him time.”
“But we are in a hurry,” said Tommy. “We're burning to learn all about it. Norah is to teach me the house side, while you instruct Bob how to tell a merino bullock—is it not?—from an Ayrshire.” Everybody ate with suspicious haste, and she looked at them shrewdly. “Now, I have said that all wrong, I feel sure, but it's just as well for you to be prepared for that. Norah will have a busy time correcting my mistakes.”
“You aren't supposed to know anything about cattle and things like that,” said Norah. “And when it comes to the house side, I don't think you'll find I can teach you much—if anyone brought up to know French cooking and French housekeeping has much to learn from a backblocks Australian, I'll be surprised.”
“In fact,” said Mr. Linton, “I should think that the lessons will generally end in the students of domestic economy fleeing forth upon horses and studying how to deal with beef—on the hoof. Don't you, Wally?”
“Rather,” said Wally. “And Brownie will wash up after them, and say, 'Bless their hearts, why would they stay in a hot kitchen!' And so poor old Bob will go down the road to ruin!”
“It's a jolly prospect,” said Bob placidly. “I think we'll knock a good deal of fun out of it!”
They trooped out in a body presently on their preliminary voyage of discovery; touring the house itself, with its big rooms and wide corridors, and the broad balconies that ran round three sides, from which you looked far across the run—miles of rolling plains, dotted with trees and clumps of timber, and merging into a far line of low, scrub-grown hills. Then outside, and to the stables—a massive red brick pile, creeper-covered, where Monarch and Garryowen, and Bosun, and the buggy ponies, looked placidly from their loose boxes, and asked for—and got—apples from Jim's pockets. Tommy even made her way up the steep ladder to the loft that ran the whole length of the stables—big enough for the men's yearly dance, but just now crammed with fragrant oaten hay. She wanted to see everything, and chatted away in her eager, half-French fashion, like a happy child.