‘I thought I heard Mr. Neuchamp address you by some other Christian name,’ said Miss Neuchamp, with slight severity of aspect.
‘Oh, Tottie,’ said the girl carelessly; ‘every one calls me Tottie, or Tot; suppose it’s for shortness.’
‘I shall call you Mary Anne,’ said Miss Neuchamp with quiet decision; ‘and now, Mary Anne, are you accustomed to the use of the needle? do you like sewing?’
‘Well, I don’t like it,’ she replied ingenuously, ‘but of course I can sew a little; we have to make our own frocks and the children’s things at home.’
‘Very proper and necessary,’ affirmed Augusta; ‘if we can get the material I will superintend your making a couple of dresses for yourself, which perhaps you will think an improvement in pattern on the one you wear.’
‘Oh, I should so like to have a new pattern,’ said Tottie, with feminine satisfaction. ‘There’s plenty of nice prints in the store; I’ll speak to Mr. Banks about it, mem.’
‘I will arrange that part of it,’ said Miss Neuchamp. ‘In the meanwhile I’ll point out your bedroom, which you can put in order as well as mine for the night.’
After the first day or two Miss Neuchamp, though occasionally shocked at the Australian girl’s ignorance of that portion of the Church Catechism which exhorts people to behave ‘lowly and reverently to all their betters,’ was pleased with the intelligence and artless good-humour of her attendant. She was sufficiently acute to discriminate between the genuine respect which the girl exhibited to her, ‘a real lady,’ and the mere lip service and servility too often yielded by the English poor, from direct compulsion of grinding poverty and sore need. She discovered that Tottie was quick and teachable in the matter of needlework, so that, having been stimulated by the alluring expectation of ‘patterns,’ she worked readily and creditably.
For a few days Miss Neuchamp managed to employ and interest herself not altogether unpleasantly. Ernest, of course, betook himself off to some manner of station work immediately after breakfast, returning, if possible, to lunch. This interval Miss Neuchamp filled up in great measure by means of her correspondence, which was voluminous and various of direction, ranging from her Aunt Ermengarde, a conscientious but ruthless conservative, to philosophical acquaintances whom she had met in her travels, and who, like her, had much ado to fill up those leisure hours of which their lives were chiefly composed. This portion of the day also witnessed Tottie’s most arduous labours, to which she addressed herself with great zeal and got through her work, as she termed it, so as to attire herself becomingly and wait at table.
In the afternoon Ernest went out for walking excursions to such points of interest, neither many nor picturesque, as the neighbourhood supplied. There was a certain ‘bend’ or curving reach of the river where, from a lofty bluff, the red walls of which the rushing tide had channelled for ages, a striking and uncommon view was obtained. The vast plain, here diversified by the giant eucalypti which fringed the winding watercourse, stretched limitless to the horizon. But all was apparently barren from Dan to Beersheba. The reed-beds were trampled and eaten down to the last cane. The soft rich alluvium in which they grew was cracked, yet hard as a brickfield. How different from the swaying emerald billows with feathered tasselled crests which other summers had seen there! Something of this sort had Ernest endeavoured to explain to Miss Neuchamp when she spoke disrespectfully of the trodden cloddy waste, contrasting it scornfully with the velvet meads which bordered English rivers. But Augusta, defective in imagination, never believed in anything she did not see. Therefore a reed-bed appeared to her mental vision till the day of her death always as a species of abnormal dismal swamp, lacking the traditional element of moisture.