The three women followed him. To Cicely's English eyes the entire homestead was a strangely delightful place.
Rolling to one side the matting that covered the floor of the counting-house, Mr. Wentworth paused, and introducing a lever between the joining of two boards upheaved a square trap-door, revealing to the eyes of the astonished English ladies, and the no less astonished Australian "boss," a wide, gaping receptacle, suitable for the very articles under discussion.
It looked dark and gloomy below, but on the manager's striking a wax match and holding it aloft, they were enabled each one to descend the short ladder which the opening of the flooring revealed. Beneath the counting-house Kate found to her amazement a room quite as large as the one above it, furnished with chairs, a table, and a couple of stout iron safes. Upon the table stood an old iron candlestick into which Mr. Wentworth inserted a candle lighted from his wax match.
"You never told me," were Kate's reproachful words, and still more reproachful glance.
"I tell you now," he said lightly. "There was no need to before. Your father showed it me when I had been here a year. Indeed, he and I often forgot that the counting-house had been built for a double purpose,—but that was because there was nothing to stow away of much value. Now I think we have just the hiding-place for all that silver."
It was indeed the place, the very place, and under great secrecy the silver was conveyed through the trap-door, and firmly locked into the iron safes.
So far so good, and Kate breathed again with almost as much of her old light-heartedness as before.
In spite of her doubt of the wisdom of bringing such valuables so far and to such a place, she and Cicely took a secret delight in a weekly cleaning up of the silver, secure of all observation from outsiders. It was a pleasure to Kate to lift and polish the handsome épergne, and to finger the delicate teaspoons and fanciful fish-knives and forks.
"What a haul this would be for a bushranger!" she said one day, as she carefully laid the admired épergne back into its place in the iron safe.
Cicely gave a gasp and a shudder. "You—you don't have them in these parts, surely!" she ejaculated.