The stockmen tramped out, making violent efforts to be noiseless.
"Whisht, can't y'?" said Murty, indignantly, as Dave cannoned into a chair in the hall. "Have y' not got anny manners at all, thin, Davy? wid' him lyin' there, an' good luck to him! Did y' see how he made us put his sofy in that square little winder?"
"Why?" asked the slower Mr. Boone.
"An' what but to see the first glimpse av them kids comin' home? Y' do be an ass, Davy!" said Murty, pleasantly. "Begob, 'tis somethin' f'r a man's eyes to see how Miss Norah handles that bay horse!"
Left to himself, David Linton made a pretence at reading a paper, but his eyes were weary, and presently the sheet crackled to the floor, and lay unheeded. Brownie, coming in softly, thought he had fallen asleep, and tiptoed to the couch with a light rug, which she drew over him. They handled him very carefully; although his clean, hard life had helped him to make a wonderful recovery, his injuries had been severe; and it would be many weeks yet before he could use his leg, even with crutches. The trained nurse from Melbourne, who had been more or less a necessary evil, or, as Jim put it, "an evil necessary," had been dispensed with a week before; and now he had as many attendants as there were inhabitants of Billabong, with Norah as head nurse and Brownie as superintendent, and Jim as right-hand man. Once there had been a plan that Jim should go North, for other experience, after leaving school. But it was never talked of now.
This was the first day, since they had brought her father home, that Norah had been induced to leave him; and then it had taken a command on his part to make her go. She was growing pale and hollow-eyed with the long watching.
Dr. Anderson, whose visits were becoming rarer, had prescribed a tonic, which Norah had taken meekly, and without apparent results.
"The tonic she wants is her own old life," Brownie had said. "Stickin' inside the house all day! it's no wonder she's peakin' and pinin'. Make her go out, sir." So David Linton had asserted himself from his couch; and Jim had taken Norah for a ride over the paddocks, and to call for the mail at the Cross Roads, where the Billabong loose bag was left by the coach three times a week.
He was lying with his eyes fixed on the track when they came out of the trees; both horses at a hand gallop and pulling double. Norah was on Garryowen, her face flushed and laughing, her head thrown back a little as the beautiful bay reefed and plunged forward, enjoying the speed as much as his rider. Jim was a length or so behind on Monarch, whose one ambition at that moment was, in Murty's words, "to get away on him." It was plain that the boy was exulting in the tussle. The sunlight gleamed on the black horse's splendid side as they dashed up the track.
As yet there had been no talk openly of a successor to Bobs—that wound was still too sore. For the present Norah was to ride Garryowen, since Monarch was far too frivolous to stand a long spell; Jim would handle him for the months that must elapse before his father was in the saddle again. Later on, Jim and Mr. Linton had great plans for something very special—a new pony that would not disgrace Bobs' memory, and that would fit the unused rug with the scarlet B that lay locked away in Norah's wardrobe. Other things were locked away in her heart; she never spoke of Bobs. But the two who were her mates knew.