“Ah, that’s specialized knowledge, and comes later on,” said his father, laughing. “Come along, now, and gather up your luggage: we’ve got to have dinner at the hotel. Any use asking you and the girls to join us, John?”
“No, thanks; my wife will be looking out for us. I never can get the girls home quickly enough.” They said good-bye, and presently the twins were installed on the seat of the express-waggon, their father between them, while Billy perched on top of the heap of luggage at the back. Jo had the reins: it was an understood thing that she always drove when they came home. She wheeled the greys out of the crowded yard, dodging among motors, carts, and buggies, and in a few moments they were spinning along the dusty road towards home.
“Whew-w!” said Jean. “Isn’t everything dry!”
The familiar landscape was dreary in its barrenness. Nothing green was visible, save the line of trees that marked the nearly dry bed of the creek. The paddocks were brown stretches, almost bare: little swirls of dust rose here and there as the hot breeze blew over them. They passed crops—sad little crops of oats that had come into ear while only about a foot high, and were now not worth the labour of cutting.
Scarcely any stock could be seen. A few dusty brown sheep picked up a scant living in the paddocks near the creek, and here and there were hungry-looking cows, only kept alive by hand-feeding, and apparently getting short rations of that. Everywhere dust lay thick: on the fences, on the dried-up grass by the roadside, on the dull green leaves of the hawthorn hedges past which they drove. It was clear that many weeks had gone by since a shower of rain had fallen to wash the all-covering dust away.
“Yes—you never saw the country looking like this before,” said John Weston sadly.
“No, indeed. It comes home to you with a sort of a bang,” Jo agreed. “Poor old Dad!” She put her hand on his for a brief moment.
“Wait until you see the stock,” he said sadly. “That’s what hurts: to ride out among them day after day, watching them getting poorer and poorer, and to feel you can’t do anything to help them. I’m almost ashamed to go out now—they seem to look at me as if they expected me to help. Of course, most of them have gone—the cattle, I mean. Some I sold, the rest have gone down to Gippsland. Holmes says they’re doing well enough there.”
“What about the garden, Dad?” Jean asked.
“Oh, we’ve still a garden, thank goodness—you see, the windmill pumps the water up from the spring, and it’s one of those obliging servants that works all the twenty-four hours and never asks for pay. So we can still keep the vegetables and your mother’s garden going. But we’ll have to do it ourselves: I’ve been compelled to let the Chinaman go. Sorry, too: he had the place in splendid order.”