CHAPTER IV.

A BILLABONG DAY.

ONE of the men had found an injured wallaby in an outlying paddock. It had caught in a sagging fence-wire, and broken its leg; the man, engaged in restoring the fence to tautness, had found it lying helpless and starving in a hollow. He was Murty O’Toole, and so he did not knock the soft-eyed little beast on the head, as most stockmen would have done. Murty had an Irishman’s tender heart. Besides, he knew Norah.

“Poor little baste!” he said, picking up the wallaby gently. It made no resistance, but its great eyes were terrified, and he could feel the thumping of its heart. He whistled over it. “Well, well—the treachery of that barbed-wire! Broken, is it then; and me with never a thing to mend ye! Well, Miss Norah ’ll be glad of the chance; she an’ Mr. Jim ’ll make a job of ye, an’ they afther learnin’ first-aid, near as good as doctors. Come along home now, an’ get fixed up.”

Norah had welcomed the invalid with enthusiasm. She had always kept tame wallaby, which make one of the best Bush pets; and this one was a very pretty specimen, the more attractive because of its helplessness and pain. Jim set the broken leg deftly, and Norah took over the care of the patient, which soon grew quite fearless and healed with the clean thoroughness characteristic of wild animals. Before long it could hop about the sheltered enclosure where it lived, never failing to limp to meet her when she came to feed it.

The wallaby’s midday dinner was late to-day, since a job of mustering in an outlying paddock had kept everyone out far beyond the usual luncheon hour. Norah had hurried through the meal, excusing herself before the others had finished, so that she might go to her patient. She was coming back through the sunny garden, swinging her empty milk-tin, when a curious sight met her gaze.

On the first verandah were two revolving figures; one immensely fat, the other so thin that he seemed lost in the capacious embrace of the first. As she came nearer, looking with puzzled eyes, it was evident that they were Mrs. Brown and Wally; and that Mrs. Brown was not, indeed, the embracer, but the most unwillingly embraced. From the open window of the smoking-room came the voice of the gramophone, playing a waltz in time more suited to an Irish jig; to which melody Wally was endeavouring to tune his laggard partner’s footsteps. The unfortunate Brownie, purple of face, did her best; but, for a lady weighing seventeen stone, the task of emulating Wally would not have been easy at any time—and just now Wally appeared to be compounded of quicksilver and electricity. His long legs fairly twinkled; he gambolled and caracoled rather than danced. Glimpses of his countenance, seen over Brownie’s shoulder as he twirled, showed a vision of delirious joy. At the window behind him was Jim’s face, scarcely less joyous. Mr. Linton, grinning broadly, was in a doorway.

“Oh, Wally, aren’t you an ass?” Norah ejaculated, helpless with laughter. “Brownie, dear, don’t let him kill you!”