"It's a brute of a journey," the doctor said. "Still, it must be faced some time, and the hot weather will make it worse, the longer you wait." He thought deeply. "The train is vile; and the drive to it, even in the Warners' big car, would be a strain."
"My own idea," John Lester said, "was to get a motor ambulance from Perth, and do the whole journey by road. Do you think it's workable?"
"It's your best plan, I believe," the doctor said, with relief. "Brereton would fix it up for you."
"We can make the stages what we choose, according to Dick's strength," said Mr. Lester. "I should take tents, and, if necessary, we could camp on the road. Dick would be better off in the ambulance than in some of the wayside hotels. If it took us a fortnight or more it would be easier for him than that jolting, grinding train."
"There's no risk to the boy," the doctor said. "Only weariness, and you want to spare him as much of that as you can."
A week later Mrs. Lester sat on the verandah outside Dick's room. Her husband had been reading to Dick; the boy had fallen asleep under the spell of the low, deep voice, and now the father sat watching him. She looked wearily across the garden to the wide paddocks beyond. Two months ago they had driven over them for the first time, radiant in the happiness, still a new thing, of being all together; to-night she looked at them for the last time, and there was bitterness in her soul. They were to take Dick away in the morning, the wreck of what he had been; that had been Fate's gift to them at Narrung, the sorry end of the visit that had promised such brightness. Before them lay new happiness or despair—which?
A soft step roused her. Merle stood there, with a kind of trembling determination in her face.
"Mrs. Lester," she said, "will you take me with you?"
"Take you, Merle? My dear child, how could we?"
Merle suddenly slipped to the floor beside her, catching at her skirt.