the girl, laughing.
“I never was in a theatre in my life, Missy; I don’t approve of them, my dear.”
“No more do I – no more do I! But when you’re staying with people you can’t always be your own boss, now can you?”
“You could with us, Missy.”
“Well, that’s bully; but I can’t with these folks. They’re regular terrors for the theatre, the folks I’m staying with now, and I don’t know what they’ll say if I keep ‘em waiting long. Think you can do it?”
“Not by seven; but I think we might get there between five and ten minutes past.”
“Thank God!”
Mr. Teesdale wrinkled his forehead, but said nothing. Evidently it was of the first importance that Missy should not keep her friends waiting. Of these people, however, she had already spoken so lightly that David was pleased to fancy her as not caring very much about them. He was pleased, not only because they took her to the theatre, but because he wanted no rival Australian friends for his old friend’s child; the farm, if possible, must be her only home so long as she remained in the Colony. When, therefore, the girl herself confirmed his hopes the very next time she opened her mouth, the old man beamed with satisfaction.
“These folks I’m staying with,” said Missy – “I’m not what you call dead nuts on ‘em, as I said before.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” chuckled David, “because we want you all to ourselves, my dear.”
“So you think! Some day you’ll be sorry you spoke.”
“Nonsense, child. What makes you talk such rubbish? You’ve got to come and make your home with us until you’re tired of us, as I’ve told you already. Where is it they live, these friends of yours?”
“Where do they live?” repeated Missy. “Oh, in Kew.”
“Ah – Kew.”
The name was spoken in a queer, noticeable tone, as of philosophic reflection. Then the farmer smiled and went on driving in silence; they were progressing at a good speed now. But Missy had looked up anxiously.
“What do you know about Kew?” said she.
“Not much,” replied David, with a laugh; “only once upon a time I had a chance of buying it – and had the money too!”
“You had the money to buy Kew?”
“Yes, I had it. There was a man who took me on to a hill and showed me a hollow full of scrub and offered to get me the refusal of it for an old song. I had the money and all, as it happened, but I wasn’t going to throw it away. The place looked a howling wilderness; but it is now the suburb of Kew.”
“Think of that. Aren’t you sorry you didn’t buy it?”
“Oh, it makes no difference.”
“But you’d be so rich if you had!”
“I should be a millionaire twice over,” said the farmer, complacently, as he removed his ruin of a top-hat to let in the breeze upon his venerable pate. Missy sat aghast at him.
“It makes me sick to think of it,” she exclaimed. “I don’t know what I couldn’t do to you! If I’d been you I’d have cut my throat years ago. To think of the high old time you could have had!”
“I never had that much desire for a high old time,” said Mr. Teesdale with gentle exaltation.
“Haven’t I, then, that’s all!” cried his companion in considerable excitement. “It makes a poor girl feel bad to hear you go on like that.”
“But you’re not a poor girl.”
Missy was silenced.
“Yes, I am,” she said at last, with an air of resolution. It was not, however, until they were the better part of a mile nearer Melbourne.
“You are what?”
“A poor girl.”
“Nonsense, my dear. I wonder what your father would say if he heard you talk like that.”
“He’s got nothing to do with it.”
“Not when he’s worth thousands, Missy?”
“Not when he’s thousands of miles away, Mr. Teesdale.”
Mr. Teesdale raised his wrinkled forehead and drove on. A look of mingled anxiety and pain aged him years in a minute. Soon the country roads were left behind, and the houses began closing up on either side of a very long and broad high road. It was ten minutes to seven by Mr. Teesdale’s watch when he looked at it again. It was time for him to say the difficult thing which had occurred to him two or three miles back, and he said it in the gentlest tones imaginable from an old man of nearly seventy.
“Missy, my dear, is it possible” (so he put it) “that you have run short of the needful?”
“It’s a fact,” said Missy light-heartedly.
“But how, my dear, have you managed to do that?”
“How? Let’s see. I gave a lot away – to a woman in the steerage – whose husband went and died at sea. He died of dropsy. I nursed him, I did. Rather! I helped lay him out when he was dead. But don’t go telling anybody – please.”
Mr. Teesdale had shuddered uncontrollably; now, however, he shifted the reins to his right hand in order to pat Missy with his left.
“You’re a noble girl. You are that! Yet it’s only what I should have expected of their child. I might ha’ known you’d be a noble girl.”
“But you won’t tell anybody?”
“Not if you’d rather I didn’t. That proves your nobility! About how much would you like, my dear, to go on with?”
“Oh, twenty pounds.”
Mr. Teesdale drew the breeze in through the broken ranks of his teeth.
“Wouldn’t – wouldn’t ten do, my dear?”
“Ten? Let’s think. No, I don’t think I could do with a penny less than twenty. You see, a wave came into the cabin and spoilt all my things. I want everything new.”
“But I understood you had such a good voyage, Missy?”
“Not from me you didn’t! Besides, it was my own fault: I gone and left the window open, and in came a sea. Didn’t the captain kick up a shine! But I told him it was worse for me than for him; and look at the old duds I’ve got to go about in all because! Why, I look quite common – I know I do. No; I must have new before I come out to stay at the farm.”
“I’m sure our Arabella dresses simple,” the farmer was beginning; but Missy cut him short, and there was a spot of anger on each of her pale cheeks as she broke out:
“But this ain’t simple – it’s common! I had to borrow the most of it. All my things were spoilt. I can’t get a new rig-out for less than twenty pounds, and without everything new – ”
“Nay, come!” cried old David, in some trouble. “Of course I’ll let you have anything you want – I have your father’s instructions to do so. But – but there are difficulties. It’s difficult at this moment. You see the banks are closed, and – and – ”
“Oh, don’t you be in any hurry. Send it when you can; then I’ll get the things and come out afterwards. Why, here we are at Lonsdale Street!”
“But I want you to come out soon. How long would it take you to get everything?”
“To-day’s Thursday. If I had it to-morrow I could come out on Monday.”
“Then you shall have it to-morrow,” said David, closing his lips firmly. “Though the banks are closed, there’s the man we send our milk to, and he owes me a lump more than twenty pound. I’ll go to him now and get the twenty from him, or I’ll know the reason why! Yes, and I’ll post it to you before I go back