A Little Bush Maid | Page 2

very
fat, his broad, yellow face generally wearing a cheerful grin--unless he
happened to catch sight of Hogg. His long pigtail was always concealed
under his flapping straw hat. Once Jim, who was Norah's big brother,
had found him asleep in his hut with the pigtail drooping over the edge
of the bunk. Jim thought the opportunity too good to lose and, with
such deftness that the Celestial never stirred, he tied the end of the
pigtail to the back of a chair--with rather startling results when Lee
Wing awoke with a sudden sense of being late, and made a spring from
the bunk. The chair of course followed him, and the loud yell of fear
and pain raised by the victim brought half the homestead to the scene

of the catastrophe. Jim was the only one who did not wait for
developments. He found business at the lagoon.
The queerest part of it was that Lee Wing firmly believed Hogg to be
the author of his woe. Nothing moved him from this view, not even
when Jim, finding how matters stood, owned up like a man. "You allee
same goo' boy," said the pigtailed one, proffering him a succulent raw
turnip. "Me know. You tellee fine large crammee. Hogg, he tellee
crammee, too. So dly up!" And Jim, finding expostulation useless,
"dried up" accordingly and ate the turnip, which was better than the
leek.
To the right of the homestead at Billabong a clump of box trees
sheltered the stables that were the unspoken pride of Mr. Linton's heart.
Before his time the stables had been a conglomerate mass, bark-roofed,
slab-sided, falling to decay; added to as each successive owner had
thought fit, with a final mixture of old and new that was neither
convenient nor beautiful. Mr. Linton had apologised to his horses
during his first week of occupancy and, in the second, turning them out
to grass with less apology, had pulled down the rickety old sheds,
replacing them with a compact and handsome building of red brick,
with room for half a dozen buggies, men's quarters, harness and feed
rooms, many loose boxes and a loft where a ball could have been
held--and where, indeed, many a one was held, when all the young
farmers and stockmen and shearers from far and near brought each his
lass and tripped it from early night to early dawn, to the strains of old
Andy Ferguson's fiddle and young Dave Boone's concertina. Norah had
been allowed to look on at one or two of these gatherings. She thought
them the height of human bliss, and was only sorry that sheer inability
to dance prevented her from "taking the floor" with Mick Shanahan, the
horse breaker, who had paid her the compliment of asking her first. It
was a great compliment, too, Norah felt, seeing what a man of agility
and splendid accomplishments was Mick--and that she was only nine at
the time.
There was one loose box which was Norah's very own property, and
without her permission no horse was ever put in it except its rightful

occupant--Bobs, whose name was proudly displayed over the door in
Jim's best carving.
Bobs had always belonged to Norah, He had been given to her as a foal,
when Norah used to ride a round little black sheltie, as easy to fall off
as to mount. He was a beauty even then, Norah thought; and her father
had looked approvingly at the long-legged baby, with his fine,
well-bred head. "You will have something worth riding when that
fellow is fit to break in, my girlie," he had said, and his prophecy had
been amply fulfilled. Mick Shanahan said he'd never put a leg over a
finer pony. Norah knew there never had been a finer anywhere. He was
a big pony, very dark bay in colour, and "as handsome as paint," and
with the kindest disposition; full of life and "go," but without the
smallest particle of vice. It was an even question which loved the other
best, Bobs or Norah. No one ever rode him except his little mistress.
The pair were hard to beat--so the men said.
To Norah the stables were the heart of Billabong. The house was all
very well--of course she loved it; and she loved her own little room,
with its red carpet and dainty white furniture, and the two long
windows that looked out over the green plain. That was all right; so
were the garden and the big orchard, especially in summer time! The
only part that was not "all right" was the drawing-room--an apartment
of gloomy, seldom-used splendour that Norah hated with her whole
heart.
But the stables were an abiding refuge. She was never dull there. Apart
from the never-failing welcome in Bobs' loose