'Very well, Tommy, and if you're good you can have what's left tomorrow.'
'That's all right,' responded Tommy in bush formula.
'Have you seen anything of your master—or the postman?' asked Lady Bridget of Mrs Hensor.
'I believe Mr McKeith is coming on ahead with Harry the Blower,' said Mrs Hensor. 'Look sharp, Tommy, the cattle will be at the yard directly, and I've got my dinner to cook for the whole lot of them, seeing that some visitors aren't good enough for the house.'
The woman pointed her last sentence by a malicious glance at the mistress of Moongarr.
'I suppose that is what your master keeps you here for—to cook for the visitors at the Quarters, Mrs Hensor,' said Lady Bridget, with incisive sweetness.
Mrs Hensor flushed scarlet, but she checked an impudent reply. Pulling Tommy angrily along, she hurried up to the four-roomed, zinc-roofed humpey and its lean-to kitchen, protected by a bough shade, which lay between the head-station and the gully, with the stockyard close to it, and which constituted her domain. It annoyed Mrs Hensor to hear McKeith called her master. She always spoke of her late husband as having been the Boss-mate on that—to him fatal—exploring expedition. Also, she resented having all the bachelors 'dumped down'—as she phrased it—on her, while the 'Ladyship's swell staff' was spared the trouble. At present the Bachelors' Quarters was fairly full. Mr Ninnis, store-keeper and overseer in the owner's absence, abode there permanently, and just now, there were Zack Duppo, the horse-breaker, and a young man from Breeza Downs—a combined cattle and sheep station about fifty miles distant—who had come to help in the mustering and to collect any beasts strayed from the Breeza Downs' herd.
The gully crossing lay below the boulders of rock at the head of the lagoon. Presently, two horsemen appeared on the rise. One was McKeith; the other Harry the Mailman—otherwise the Blower—a foxy, browny-red little man on a raw-boned chestnut, carrying his mail-bags strapped in front and at the side of his saddle.
Lady Bridget supposed they had met at the turn-off track just above the crossing. McKeith was carrying a leather mail-bag, from which he appeared to have extracted a bundle of letters, with one hand. He held his bridle and coiled stock-whip in the other. He was listening to the mailman, who seemed to be talking animatedly. As they neared the house, he gave the usual COO-EE, that set all the dogs barking, and put the Chinaman-cook and black-boys on the alert.
The riders passed by the end of the veranda where Lady Bridget stood. McKeith looked up at her. He seemed preoccupied and angry, and merely nodded to his wife, but did not take off his hat as he had done in earlier days—and, somehow, to-day she noticed the omission.