“We try to teach Norah deportment,” she said, greeting him, and laughing, while big Jim hugged his sister frankly, totally unabashed by the amused glances from various parts of the garden. “But I am afraid the effect isn’t very evident on breaking up day!”
“I’m quite certain we’re demoralizing influences,” he told her. “But what can you expect, from the Back of Beyond? We’ll try to make her remember the deportment when we get her back to the station, Miss Winter. At present, you must make allowances.”
Miss Winter thawed amazingly under the influence of the quiet voice, deep and courteous, and the Linton smile, which was a wonderfully pleasant one. It was very frequent upon the face of her pupil, and had at all times a tendency to upset discipline; and now the same smile appeared, if more rarely, on the bronzed giants, father and son, who confronted her upon the path. They were very alike—over six feet—Mr. Linton had yet a couple of inches to the good, but Jim was overhauling him fast—lean and broad-shouldered, with the same well-cut features and keen eyes. Norah said that they had absorbed the good looks of the family, leaving her none; which was partly true, although the remark would have moved her father and brother to wrath. In their grey suits and Panama hats, they were excellent specimens of long-limbed Australia, and Norah gazed at them as though she could not take away the eyes that had been hungry for so many long months.
It was evident that neither Jim nor his father found it easy to talk polite nothings to Miss Winter. Their eyes kept straying to the slim figure that was the main thing in their world—Norah, who jigged irrepressibly on one foot and broke into sudden smiles, and forgot altogether the discipline and deportment that had been instilled into her during three terms at Beresford House. To put her there at all had been a proceeding much like caging a bush bird, for, until she was fourteen, Norah had known only home and its teachings. And home was Billabong Station, where, apart from lessons that had been a little patchy, she had lived her father’s life—a life of open-air, of horses and cattle, and all the station interests. Jim had been sent to the Grammar School in Melbourne comparatively early, and Norah’s city relatives, particularly a number of assorted aunts, were wont to deplore that the little girl had not had the same opportunity of polish. But the bond between David Linton and his motherless child had been too strong to break, and the silent man had snatched at every pretext for delaying the pang of parting.
After all, as he told himself, half in excuse, Norah was no discredit to home teaching. In books she might be below the average; but of the unvoiced learning that lies beyond the world of books she had, perhaps, rather more than falls to the ordinary schoolgirl. A big station is a little world in itself, and the Bush teaching makes for self-control and self-reliance, and a simple, straight outlook on the world that is not a bad foundation of character. Lessons in deportment and manners are not part of its curriculum: but there are a good many ideas in thought and practice that it cultivates half unconsciously. Norah had an almost superstitious regard for doing what Jim termed “the decent thing.”
Moreover, her father had given her an ideal to follow. The mother who had gone away from them so soon had never been far from his thoughts or his slow speech: and “Brownie,” the old woman who had taken the little dark-haired baby from her weak arms, had helped to make the picture of “Mother” that was so real that Norah had always known and loved it. Vaguely she knew that there was a lack in her father’s life which she must try to fill. It had tended to make her gentle—to bring out something that was almost protective in her nature. There is a trace of motherliness in every girl-heart; Norah always felt that, while Dad and Jim were very large and strong and dependable, yet it rested with her to “look after them.” Had she put her thoughts into words it is quite likely that the objects of her care might have felt a shade of amusement; but as she did not, they appreciated her attentions mightily. To them, the heart of Billabong had dropped out when Norah went away to school.
And school had been something of a trial. Norah’s bringing-up had been along lines where rules of conduct are understood rather than expressed; although she was a well-behaved damsel, in her own setting, it had not been easy to find herself suddenly hedged in to such an extent that she lived and breathed and ate and slept by regulation and timetable. She realized that it was necessary to conform; but practice was a harder matter, and the time at school had seen many “scrapes” and many impositions. Common sense and good temper helped her through, and the appearance of Jean Yorke upon a somewhat lonely horizon had helped in a different way. But only Norah herself knew just how bad had been the homesickness and the silent longing for her own old life. She knew that Dad and Jim would be hurt by knowing, therefore she kept these matters to herself, and diligently cultivated Jim’s prescription of “a stiff upper lip.”
Now it was over. There would be other years; but no year could ever be quite like the first, especially since there was now Jean to help—Jean being a comprehending person, whose heart had gone out to Norah since the day of her arrival at Beresford House, three months ago. Jean came from New Zealand, and she, too, was lonely, with the desperate loneliness born of the fact that she would not see home or the home people for two years. When Norah contemplated Jean’s woeful plight she was ashamed to admit that she had been homesick on her own account. So they “twin-souled” immediately, and made life very much easier for each other.
How this last week had crawled! Each night Norah had crossed out the finished day upon her calendar with thick, red strokes that were some relief to her pent-up feelings; always doing it just at the last moment before turning out the light and jumping into bed, so that she might have the friendly darkness to cover her as she buried her face in the pillow, wriggling, with sheer physical inability to keep still as she realized how near were home and Dad and Jim. Near—but how slow the days! Examinations and matches were over, and the work of the school slackening. She flung herself headlong into games and “break up” preparations to make the slow hours pass, dividing each day into hours and half hours—she even reduced them to minutes, but the sum total looked too enormous! Her school work was characteristic of her turmoil of mind. Once she rattled over the provisions of Magna Charta for the Latin master with a fluency that paralyzed the unfortunate man, who had merely asked her to decline an inoffensive noun; while Miss Winter gave her up as hopeless on being informed that Thomas a’Becket Archbishop of Canterbury, lost his life by drowning in a butt of malmsey! Norah saw nothing incongruous in the prelate’s alleged death, and spent much of the hour’s detention that followed in drawing a spirited picture of it—representing a large barrel, from the yawning mouth of which protruded two corpulent legs, clad in gaiters, and immaculately shod. The charm of the picture was in the portion of it that was not visible. It was unfortunate that it fell into the hands of Miss Winter, who was handicapped by a literal mind. Altogether, the last week had been more or less exciting and painful, and it was quite as well that it was over.
The great bell of the school rang out sharply, and a kind of white flicker came over the garden as the girls moved quickly in answer. It was the signal to assemble in hall. Norah exchanged looks of longing with Jim and Wally. Then she and Jean moved off towards the house, endeavouring to calm spasmodic footsteps.