“Your kindness, ma’am, would electrify me if I were not used to it,” said Wally, ruefully, getting his long form by degrees out of the low chair in which he was coiled. “Why you don’t put a chain on that old Wyandotte’s horny leg is more than I can imagine—I believe it’s because you like to see me worming my way under that beastly stack. Man was not made to emulate the goanna and the serpent, young Norah, and it’s time you realised the fact.”
“I don’t see how it affects you, at any rate,” said Norah, cruelly. “Boys of seventeen!” She tilted a naturally tilted nose, and patted Wally kindly on the head as she passed him. “In a few years you will probably be too fat to crawl under anything at all, and meanwhile it’s excellent exercise.”
“It’s a good thing for you that you’re a mere girl,” said the maligned one, following her. “When the meek inherit the earth I’ll come in for all Billabong, I should think, for certainly you and Jim won’t deserve it. Don’t you think so, Jimmy?”
“All the real estate your meekness is likely to bring you won’t embarrass you much,” said his chum, grinning. “One’s recollections of you at school don’t seem to include anything so meek as to be startling. In fact, now that I come to consider the matter, Dad and Norah are about the only people who ever have a chance of observing your submissive side. And not always Norah.”
“I should think not always Norah!” said that lady. “Meek, indeed!”
“As a matter of fact, there’s no one who makes me feel my own meekness so much as Brownie,” said Wally. “There’s a dignity about her that you would do well to cultivate, Norah, my child. I think it comes with weight. Still, as there seems no chance of your attaining it, how about looking after the wallaby?”
“It’s high time,” said Norah. “I told Billy to feed him whenever he thought of it, knowing that would not be more than once, and probably not at all. Coming, Jim?”
“No, thanks,” said Jim, from behind an outspread Times. “Not with the English papers in, old girl—and war flourishing.”
“You can tell us about it when we come in,” Norah said. “I’ll race you to the paddock, Wally!” The sound of their flying feet died away, leaving two silent figures on the verandah.