For it had been settled that Barry should stay another month at Hill Farm. Business was calling Dr. Lane to Queensland, and his wife insisted that he should not go alone: but Barry hated the hot weather of the North, and was so happy in the bush that his parents had begged Mrs. Hurst to keep him. Barry himself welcomed the suggestion with delight; anything was better than to grill for weeks in Brisbane in midsummer; and Hill Farm, where he had settled down as though it had always been his home, was a very lucky alternative.
The partnership between him and Robin had deepened into a firm friendship. Barry’s feeling of natural superiority as a boy had quickly vanished before the girl’s leadership in all bushcraft. He was a clumsy new chum where she trod with the sure, quick step of one who has entered into her kingdom. The dense scrub that puzzled him was to her an open book, for she had that instinctive knowledge of direction and of unconscious observation that marks the bushman born. It irritated Barry, now and then, that she should know so much. “For, after all, you haven’t been here so awfully long yourself,” he would say. Robin could not explain it. “I feel as if I’d been born knowing the bush,” she would answer, half apologetically. “But you’re getting on splendidly, Barry, so don’t worry.”
Already the month for which the Lanes had asked had gone by, and Dr. Lane was, as he said, “screwing-out” a few more days before he and his wife must go North. It had been a very happy month; everything had gone smoothly, the Lanes had been the most cheerful and considerate of paying-guests, and Mrs. Hurst marvelled at the ease with which she had managed her big household. There was satisfaction in that, as there was in the thought of the comfortable little balance mounting up in the bank: solid satisfaction, too, in the knowledge that she and Robin had made good friends. The Lanes declared that nothing should prevent their visit being a yearly one, so long as Hill Farm would have them: they had exacted a half-promise that Robin and her mother should visit them in Melbourne. The vision of the future, when Robin must go to the city to learn typing, lost half its terrors for the anxious mother now that she knew that her child would not be friendless.
On the flat below, the riders decided that their ponies had had enough tuition in jumping—perhaps induced to this conclusion by their own bruises. They came cantering up, passed the house with a gay shout, and presently appeared on the veranda, flushed and hot.
“What have you done with the ponies?” asked Mrs. Hurst.
“Taken them back to their own paddock: Mr. Merritt wants them to-morrow. Oh, Mother, we’ve had fun!”
“You seemed to be enjoying life,” Dr. Lane said. “I hope the ponies enjoyed it too.”
“Oh, they were quite happy. They knew ever so much more about it than we did—but we managed to get the same point of view after a while. Jumping’s great sport,” Barry ended.
“When you stick on?”
“Yes—or even when you don’t. The grass is so thick down there it’s like falling on a carpet, and if we fell off the ponies always stopped very kindly and began to feed. It must be much more disheartening to fall off and see your horse disappearing into the distance: I like them trained to pause, like these.”