There were sounds of hoof-beats on the track, faint at first and then more distinct. The dogs burst into a wild chorus of welcome. Brownie disappeared hurriedly in the direction of the kitchen, and Mr. Linton lay back in his long chair and gave his letter a half-hearted attention, his eyes wandering to the door in the porch. Presently came quick feet and merry voices, the door swung open, and three people entered in a pell-mell fashion and descended upon the verandah like a miniature cyclone.
“I know we’re late, but we couldn’t help it,” Norah said breathlessly. “There was such a heap to do in the Far Plain, Dad—you ask the manager!” She shot a laughing glance at her brother, an immensely tall individual, who responded by lazily pitching his hat at her. “Oh, the wind is cold, Dad—we raced home against it, and it cut like a knife. But it was lovely. Have you had tea? I do hope you haven’t.”
“I waited for the mistress of the house; and Brownie gave me her views on the Higher Education of Women,” said her father. “She seems to think you’re learning too much, Norah. Are you worried about it?”
“Not so much as my teachers,” said Norah, laughing. “And their anxieties seem all the other way. Oh, don’t let us think of school, Daddy—it will be bad enough when the time really comes.”
The third of the newcomers uttered a hollow groan. Like Jim Linton, he was a tall, lean boy; but while Jim gave promise of as mighty a pair of shoulders as his father’s, Wally Meadows exemplified at the moment length without breadth. Everything about him was lean and quick and active; his brown hands were never still, and his merry brown face was always alight with interest, except in those deep moments when those who knew him had reason to suspect some amazing outbreak of mischief in his plotting brain. Finding that no one observed him, he groaned again, yet more hollowly.
“What’s the matter, old man?” Jim asked. “Toothache? Or lack of tea?”
“I don’t have toothache; and Billabong doesn’t have any lack of tea. If you haven’t just had tea here, it’s because you’re just going to have it,” said Wally severely, and with truth; for in an Australian bush home tea begins to occur at an early hour in the morning, and continues to occur with great frequency all day. “No, it’s only the idea of school. You’re so hideously old and important now that I suppose you forget all about it, but it’s only two Christmases ago that Norah and I used to dry your tears at going back. Didn’t we, Norah?
“What about your own tears?” Mr. Linton asked, laughing.
“Why, I shed them still,” said Wally. “I could begin now, quite easily. Didn’t you hear me groan?—I’ll do it again, if you’d care for it. It isn’t any trouble.”
“Don’t think of me,” begged his host. “I wouldn’t put you to the exertion for any consideration. And really I don’t believe that any of you mind school half as much as you make out. You have an uncommonly good time when you’re there.”