“Neither do we at Caddagat,” I replied.
“Now, child, let me have a good look at you without your hat.”
“Oh, please don’t!” I exclaimed, covering my face with my hands. “I am so dreadfully ugly that I cannot bear to have anyone look at me.”
“What a silly little girl! You are not like your mother, but you are not at all plain-looking. Harold says you are the best style of girl he has seen yet, and sing beautifully. He got a tuner up from Sydney last week, so we will expect you to entertain us every night.”
I learnt that what Harold pronounced good no one dared gainsay at Five-Bob Downs.
We proceeded direct to the dining-room, and had not been there long when Mr Beecham entered with the little girl on his shoulder. Miss Beecham had told me she was Minnie Benson, daughter of Harold’s married overseer on Wyambeet, his adjoining station. Miss Beecham considered it would have been more seemly for her nephew to have selected a little boy as a play-thing, but his sentiments regarding boys were that they were machines invented for the torment of adults.
“Well, O’Doolan, what sort of a day has it been?” Harold inquired, setting his human toy upon the floor.
“Fine wezzer for yim duts,” she promptly replied.
“Harold, it is shameful to teach a little innocent child such abominable slang; and you might give her a decent nickname,” said Miss Beecham.
“O’Doolan, this is Miss Melvyn, and you have to do the same to her as you do to me.”