“I’ll tell you that when I see you busy with this pork pie,” returned the Rose. “I made it myself, so you ought to find it good. Be quick, for I have work for you to do, and there is no time to lose. Content yourself with a cold breakfast for once.”
“Humph! as if I hadn’t contented myself with a cold breakfast at any time. Well, it is a good pie. Now—about Paul?”
“He has gone away with Mr Westly and Flinders to search for Mr Brixton.”
“What! without me?” exclaimed Tolly, overturning his chair as he started up and pushed his plate from him.
“Yes, without you, Tolly; I advised him not to awake you.”
“It’s the unkindest thing you’ve ever done to me,” returned the boy, scarcely able to restrain his tears at the disappointment. “How can they know where to search for him without me to guide them? Why didn’t you let them waken me!”
“You forget, Tolly, that my father knows every inch of these woods and plains for at least fifty miles round the old house they have blown up; and, as to waking you, it would have been next to impossible to have done so, you were so tired, and you would have been quite unable to keep your eyes open. Besides, I had a little plan of my own which I want you to help me to carry out. Go on with your breakfast and I’ll explain.”
The boy sat down to his meal again without speaking, but with a look of much curiosity on his expressive face.
“You know, without my telling you,” continued Betty, “that I, like my father, have a considerable knowledge of this part of the country, and of the ways of Indians and miners, and from what you have told me, coupled with what father has said, I think it likely that the Indians have carried poor T–—Mr Brixton, I mean—through the Long Gap rather than by the plains—”
“So I would have said, had they consulted me,” interrupted the boy, with an offended air.