‘Well, I can’t say, miss,’ replied Tottie, plotting a surprise, with characteristic coolness, ‘about English girls’ looks, because I’ve hardly ever seen any; but as for health, I’ve a middling appetite, I never was a day ill since I was born, and as to being strong—look here.‘
Before the horrified Augusta could forbid her rapid motion, she bounded over to the dray, from which Mr. Windsor had just borne his two hundred pounds of farina. She placed her back beneath the lessening load, and stretching her arms upward in the way proper to grasp the tied corner of the bag, said imperiously, ‘Here, Mr. Carrier, just you lower that bag steady; I want to show the English lady what a Currency girl can walk away with.’
The tall sunburned driver entered into the joke, and winking at Charley Banks, who stood by laughing, he placed the heavy bag fairly and square upon Tottie’s plump shoulders. Miss Neuchamp’s gaze was riveted upon the erratic ‘help’ as if she had been about to commit suicide.
‘Oh! don’t—don’t,’ she gasped; ‘are you mad, Mary Anne? You will break your back, or cripple yourself for life. Mr. Banks, pray interfere! I am sure my cousin will be angry—pray stop her!’
Charley Banks was not afraid that anything dreadful would happen. He had seen the bush girls perform feats of strength and activity ere now which proved to him that very little cause for apprehension existed in the present case.
And there was not much time. For one moment the girl stood, with her arms raised above her head, her figure, in its natural and classic grace, proving the unspeakable advantage of the free, open-air life, with fullest liberty for varied exercise, which she had had from her birth. The next she had moved forward with firm, elastic tread, under a load which a city man out of training would have found no joke, and, walking into the store, permitted it to fall accurately beside the others which had been shot from the backs of Jack Windsor and Mr. Banks into their appointed corner.
There was a slight cheer, and an exclamation of, ‘Well done, Tottie,’ as she returned with a heightened colour and half-triumphant, half-confused air to Miss Neuchamp, who, relieved at her safe return from the dangerous feat, did not administer so severe a rebuke as might have been expected.
‘You may be thankful, Mary Anne, if you do not hereafter discover that this day’s folly has laid the foundation of lifelong ill-health. But come into the house, child. You have some colour for once. Let me see no more pranks of this sort again, while I am here.’
‘Lor, miss,’ said Tottie, ‘that’s not the first bag of flour I’ve carried. And father says there was a girl he knew at the Hawkesbury that took one—and him a-top of it—around her father’s barn. He was only a boy then.’
‘I think you may lay the tea, Mary Anne,’ said Miss Neuchamp, not requiring any more Hawkesbury anecdotes. ‘I feel unusually fatigued to-day.’