My mother was busy upon piles and piles of wearying mending, which was one of the most hopeless of the many slaveries of her life. This was hard work, and my father was slaving away in the sun, and mine was arduous labour, and it was a very hot day, and a drought-smitten and a long day, and poddy calves ever have a tendency to make me moralize and snarl. This was life, my life and my parents’ life, and the life of those around us, and if I was a good girl and honoured my parents I would be rewarded with a long stretch of it. Yah!
These pagan meditations were interrupted by a footfall slowly approaching. I did not turn to ascertain who it might be, but trusted it was no one of importance, as the poddy and I presented rather a grotesque appearance. It was one of the most miserable and sickly of its miserable kind, and I was in the working uniform of the Australian peasantry. My tattered skirt and my odd and bursted boots, laced with twine, were spattered with whitewash, for coolness my soiled cotton blouse hung loose, an exceedingly dilapidated sun-bonnet surmounted my head, and a bottle of castor-oil was in my hand.
I supposed it was one of the neighbours or a tea-agent, and I would send them to mother.
The footsteps had come to a halt beside me.
“Could you tell me if—”
I glanced upwards. Horrors! There stood Harold Beecham, as tall and broad as of yore, even more sunburnt than ever, and looking very stylish in a suit of grey and a soft fashionable dinted-in hat; and it was the first time I had ever seen him in a white shirt and high collar.
I wished he would explode, or I might sink into the ground, or the calf would disappear, or that something might happen.
On recognizing me his silence grew profound, but an unmistakable expression of pity filled his eyes and stung me to the quick.
I have a faculty of self-pity, but my pride promptly refuses the slightest offer of sympathy from another.
I could feel my heart grow as bitterly cold as my demeanour was icily stiff, when I stood up and said curtly: