"'Cause they can fly as well as anything if you leave 'em both the same. They can balance, then. But you watch that chap."
"That chap" was a handsome young pullet, apparently maddened by her trials. She stared wildly for a moment when released: then, perceiving a quince tree, decided that safety lay in its branches, and endeavoured to fly thither. Her spring carried her a little way into the air: then, lacking one wing, she overbalanced and fell sideways, with terrified squawks. Reaching the ground, she bolted for shelter into Bran's kennel: and, being greeted with an amazed and indignant yap from Bran, who was already there, fluttered backwards in a state of horrified panic, and, shrieking her woes, fled down the hill-side and was lost to sight. The onlookers gave themselves up to laughter.
"Will she ever come back, do you think?"
"Oh, she'll come back all right when she feels a bit lonely," 'Possum rejoined. "Why, she ain't goin' to keep away from a place where she's had all that fun!"
Tom came up as the last of the fowls was released. Under 'Possum's advice he had spent the day in the cultivation paddock, with Roany harnessed to a sledge, picking up logs and roots which, would be in the way of the plough.
"That paddock looked quite clear: but I've a stack of wood that will last us for a fortnight, and an appetite to match it," he said. "That's a great lot of fowls! Are they what the fortune is to be made out of, 'Possum?"
"Some of it," said 'Possum. "The rest's coming out of that lucerne crop."
They went in to tea—and for the first time they saw 'Possum awkward. Outside, in the saddle, driving the heavy dray, or dealing with tools and fowls, she was simple, capable, and thoroughly at home; but the sitting-room, with its pleasant litter of books and papers and the music open on the piano, was evidently a strange world to her, and she became silent and ill at ease. The patched and faded blue dungaree, and the rough men's boots, which had fitted into the working scene, were suddenly all wrong: she looked at Aileen's dainty print frock, and felt the difference she could not put into words. It was in Aileen as well. Outside, she had been shy and awkward, ashamed of her own ignorance and helplessness: here, she was on her own ground, as she had been in the drawing-room of the "House Beautiful"; the perfect hostess, courteous and sweet-mannered. But all her tact failed, for a while, to loosen the mantle of shyness in which the unhappy 'Possum was wrapped.
Help came through little Joe. Nothing on earth could make Joe shy, though he was a gentleman of few words. Here, however, was tea, which he needed: with large fresh scones and a big cake which Mr. Macleod—a man of understanding, evidently—was cutting into generous, plummy slices. Cake did not often come in little Joe's way, and he greeted it with a wide smile.
"Ain't that scrummy, 'Poss?" he said, indicating the cake with a grubby finger.