"I'll brew the largest teapot in the house directly we get home," Tom said. "And you will just keep quiet and take things easy. You won't need to do any cooking, will you?"
"I should like to take a basket of things over to the O'Connors," she said. "But I won't do much, really, Tom. I'll starve my poor family on 'Possum's account!"
"If I believed that you would, I'd be contented," he said. "But I know you better. When shall we go over?"
"Oh, after dinner. We'll take Garth—the poor man has had a horrid morning."
Garth did not consider that he had had a horrid morning at all. It was not every day that the thrilling excitement of a broken leg came his way; and later, he had found enormous satisfaction in dusting and tidying the house, and in spurring Horrors to amazing efforts in the kitchen. The housework was done by the time the buggy drew up at the back gate—if the corners were not above reproach, Aileen knew better than to look at them. She looked instead at her little son's glowing face, and kissed him, with moist eyes; and Tom's deep "Well done, old man!" sent Garth into the seventh heaven.
There was a big basket stowed in the back of the buggy when they set off early in the afternoon: such things as might relieve the anxieties of a crippled housekeeper and of a cook of twelve. A big piece of cooked mutton; a crisp, brown loaf of soda bread, and a bundle of scones tied up in a fresh, white cloth; a big cake of the kind that invites hungry people to cut and come again, and, in a special corner, a glass of jelly and a sponge cake, warm yet, and light and puffy: things to tempt an invalid.
"Won't it be 'strordinary to see 'Possum in bed?" Garth chattered. "Do you think she has dungaree nighties, mother?"
O'Connor's farm lay two miles away, in a dark valley between hills covered with gum trees. There was no gate leading into it: only heavy slip-rails, fitting into rusty horse shoes nailed to posts on either side. Like their own farm, it had scarcely any homestead track: they bumped over tussocks and rough ground, and wriggled a tortuous way round logs and clumps of scrub. 'Possum and her father nearly always rode; and the children walked two miles across the paddocks to the little Bush school. There were few wheel-marks on O'Connor's land.
Little Joe was playing on the wood-heap near the door as the Macleods drove up. He greeted Garth with a grin of joy, and Garth's father and mother with shy pleasure.
"How is 'Possum, Joe?" asked Aileen, descending. "Is she asleep?"