“It happens without any trying, in this weather,” Jo answered. She was kneeling in front of the open oven, which gave back her voice with a hollow sound. “I wish they’d taught us at school why a cake suddenly rises in the middle and explodes! It looks weird, and I’m sure it won’t be wholesome.” Shutting the oven-door carefully, she scrambled to her feet. “It is so simple to cook things in class, with gas-stoves and Miss Smith—this oven seems to have the Equator in the middle and the North Pole at one side!”
“Don’t you worry,” said Father consolingly. “It smells tremendously good, and the scones are splendid.” He looked at his daughters, a little wrinkle in his brow. “Don’t work too hard, twinses. Mother will be vexed if she finds you knocked up.”
“Oh, we’re quite all right,” Jo replied. “It’s really great fun, Father, and we’re enjoying it. And we do want to have things nice for Mother. It would be so horrid for her to come home from Melbourne to find everything at sixes and sevens just because Sarah was sick.”
“She won’t do that,” said Father—“you have the house like a new pin. Well, I must go: there’s plenty to do in Barrabri before Mother’s train gets in.” He closed the door with a cheery farewell; and immediately re-opened it.
“By Jove, I nearly forgot something! That Jersey bull I sold to Joe Harrison is in the stock-yard, and he’ll send for him during the day. Don’t go into the yard, for he’s a nasty-tempered beast. You can tell Harrison’s man where he is; and give the man a cup of tea when he comes, and something to eat, for he’ll have had a twelve-mile ride.”
“All right,” said the twins, together.
“Thanks,” said Father. He smiled at them in the way that made it feel most uplifting to be able to do anything for him. “Now, don’t forget to eat some lunch yourselves. We’ll be back before four o’clock.”
“We’ll have the kettle boiling; Mother will want her tea badly,” Jean said. They went out upon the kitchen verandah to watch him get into the buggy, where Billy and Rex were awaiting him, swishing with the whip at the clustering flies. “Take great care of yourself!” they called. It was always their good-bye to him.
Outside, the blazing February sun beat down on the dust-coloured paddocks, above which a heat-haze shimmered. The road ran right and left beyond the homestead fences, here and there a little cloud of dust showing where a horseman rode slowly. A deeper cloud marked the passage of a flock of starving sheep, on their way to be trucked to Gippsland—many of them doomed to die from sheer weakness on the road before ever they should see the train. In the fruit trees outside the kitchen window locusts shrilled ceaselessly, and grey miners—greediest of birds—hopped and pecked, uttering long, screaming cries. The twins took advantage of the break in their work to refresh themselves with a cool drink from the canvas water-bag hanging under the shade of a great walnut-tree, Jo obligingly holding the cup for Jean, whose hands were too encumbered by flour to do so for herself. Then they dived anew into the hot kitchen.
It was an hour later that Jo was carrying a freshly baked cake across to the larder—a cool room, looking south, under the walnut-tree. She regarded her cake with a motherly eye as she went. It had baked a trifle peculiarly as to shape; still, it bore indications of being an excellent cake. The odour it exhaled was tempting enough to the hungry cook, and sent her thoughts in the hopeful direction of lunch. She put her burden carefully on a shelf, and came back across the verandah.