“To please me, Robin.”
They smiled at each other.
“But I have to go to the store with the butter——”
“Half-past three or four o’clock will be quite time enough for that. You know quite well that you won’t get rabbits early in the afternoon. Run away and get your boots off; I shall begin to be worried if you are not lying down in five minutes.”
Robin stood up, conscious that her shoulders ached badly.
“Well, I’ll go, because you are mean enough to appeal to my better nature,” she said, laughing. “But lie down, yourself, for a bit, Mummie, darling—you won’t work at that old machine all day?”
“Very well—I promise, if you will do as you are told.” She began to gather plates and dishes swiftly, and Robin went with an unwilling step. But when her mother came softly to the veranda, half an hour later, her book had fallen beside the bed, and Robin lay with her cheek upon her hand, fast asleep.
CHAPTER VI
ROBIN FINDS STRANDED WAYFARERS
A big grey touring-car came slowly along the narrow track, feeling its way round blind corners and hairpin bends. It was not a pleasant road for touring, especially to people accustomed only to the smoothness and width of city streets. The road that led out from Baroin had been metalled for only part of its length: after five or six miles, winter had put a stop to road-making, and the good surface ceased abruptly. Then with each mile as it wound into the hills, the track grew worse. It clung to the steep sides of the rises, a grey ribbon undulating between walls of bracken fern, barely wide enough, in many places, to carry a car: above it the sheer rise: below, a drop of anything from ten to a hundred feet. Sometimes the trees near it had been cleared: more often, they crowded it on both sides, so that the road ran between walls of slender trunks and tossing tree-tops. This gave variety, because any turn might reveal a tree across the track. On the other hand, the trunks might catch a car that went over the side—a helpful possibility, at the narrowest bends.
One drove along the hill-road, hoping earnestly that one would not meet any other vehicle. Should this occur, the proceedings were slow and complicated. A jinker, or a light cart, was nothing, provided the horse did not play up: the steed could be taken out of the shafts and the cart backed until a space was reached wide enough to allow of passing: which might not be for a mile, or perhaps two. Still, it was simple. More harrowing were the times when one motor encountered another, or a team of twelve or fourteen bullocks dragging a heavy waggon. Then might be seen the spectacle of a car feeling its way painfully in reverse gear, along the way it had come—a way sufficiently exciting to drive on the forward journey. Nervous passengers were wont to get out and walk. Pitt-street and Collins-street may have their terrors for the motorist, but they lack the thrills provided by a Gippsland track.