“Yes,” she said, shortly. “They know they can.”
“Well, I am not going to let Miss Stone’s report worry me,” said her mother. “I’m sorry you have got into trouble, and I wish you had worked better, especially as you have no more chances of learning. But you and I are facing the real things of life now, and school scrapes, big as they seem at the moment, will soon be forgotten. We’re partners, my daughter, and we have to trust each other in all things, and work together.” She sighed. “I do hope it won’t mean that you will get none of the joy of life while you are young. I had always hoped to be able to give you a good time—such a time as I had myself before Father, as you say ‘married me and ran away with me’.”
Robin hugged her enthusiastically.
“If you only knew how I’m loving the bare idea of being partners!” she exclaimed. “I never dared to hope for anything so lovely: all the way in the train, even when I ached with joy at seeing the country, I was aching in a different way at the thought of going back to school! I’d never have done any good there, Mummie—you don’t know how hopeless it was. Now we’ll be working together, in our own home, and sharing everything. I’m blessed if I want more joy of life than that is going to mean!”
She sat back on her heels, the firelight dancing on her vivid face and her mop of red hair.
“And to think,” she chanted, “that they’ll be getting up in the morning at the sound of the same old bell, and ploughing through the same old stodgy lessons all day, and eating the same old awful meals, and walking in the same old crocodile down the same old dusty streets! And I’m free and independent and here——”
“Milking the same old cow!” laughed her mother—looking suddenly as young as she.
“In the same old cow-bail,” Robin flashed back. “And I wouldn’t change my job for all the tea in China!”
CHAPTER V
TWO MONTHS LATER
Robin Hurst came out upon the veranda of Hill Farm in the early dawn. It was an exquisite November morning. Mists were rising slowly from the gullies, revealing the tops of giant tree-ferns; above them, invisible in tree-tops still shrouded in white clouds, cockatoos shrieked a morning chorus. A pair of kookaburras perched on the gate-posts and looked wisely at Robin: they were old friends, christened Sally and Sam, so tame that they came regularly to find the scraps of raw meat that she left for them whenever meat occurred in the Hurst household—which was not every day. They preened their feathers, puffing them out until they looked ridiculously fat, the first sunbeams making them glint with a metallic blue and bronze. Then they broke into a wild duet of laughter. The echoes ran round the hills, “Ha-ha-ha! Hoo-hoo-hoo!” and were answered by other kookaburras beyond the creek. Robin put her head back and imitated the call—a proceeding that always puzzled and delighted Sally and Sam, who waited politely until she had finished, and then laughed as if it were the best joke in the world.