1929-1932 Paddy

The new year came in with Angus MacQueen's annual Hogmanay party on Rudna Hunish, and still the move tothe big house had not been accomplished. It wasn't something done overnight, between packing over seven years'

accumulation of everyday artifacts, and Fee's declaration that the big house drawing room at least be finishedfirst. No one was in the slightest hurry, though everyone was looking forward to it. In some respects the bighouse would prove no different: it lacked electricity and the flies populated it just as thickly. But in summer itwas about twenty degrees cooler than outside, from the thickness of its stone walls and the ghost gums shadingits roof. Also, the bathhouse was a true luxury, having hot water all winter from pipes which ran up the back ofthe vast fuel stove in the cookhouse next door, and every drop in its pipes was rain water. Though baths andshowers had to be taken in this large structure with its ten separate cubicles, the big house and all the smallerhouses were liberally endowed with indoor water-closet toilets, an unheard-of degree of opulence envious Gillyresidents had been caught calling sybaritism. Aside from the Hotel Imperial, two pubs, the Catholic presbyteryand the convent, the Gillanbone district survived on out-houses. Except Drogheda homestead, thanks to itsenormous number of tanks and roofs to catch rain water. The rules were strict: no undue flushing, and plenty ofsheep-dip disinfectant. But after holes in the ground, it was heaven.

Father Ralph had sent Paddy a check for five thousand pounds at the beginning of the preceding December, tobe going on with, his letter said; Paddy handed it to Fee with a dazed exclamation. "I doubt I've managed to earnthis much in all my working days," he said. "What shall I do with it?" Fee asked, staring at it and then looking upat him, eyes blazing. "Money, Paddy! Money at last, do you realize it? Oh, I don't care about Auntie Mary'sthirteen million pounds there’s nothing real about so much. But this is real! What shall I do with it?" "Spend it,"said Paddy simply. "A few new clothes for the children and yourself? And maybe there are things you'd like tobuy for the big house? I can't think of anything else we need.""Nor can I, isn't it silly?" Up got Fee from the breakfast table, beckoning Meggie imperiously. "Come on, girl,we're walking up to the big house to look at it."Though at that time three weeks had elapsed since the frantic week following Mary Carson's death, none of theClearys had been near the big house. But now Fee's visit more than made up for their previous reluctance. Fromone room to another she marched with Meggie, Mrs. Smith, Minnie and Cat in attendance, more animated than abewildered Meggie had ever known her. She muttered to herself continually; this was dreadful, that was anabsolute horror, was Mary color-blind, did she have no taste at all? In the drawing room Fee paused longest,eyeing it expertly. Only the reception room exceeded it in size, for it was forty feet long and thirty wide, and hada fifteen-foot ceiling. It was a curious mixture of the best and the worst in its decoration, painted a uniformcream which had yellowed and did nothing to emphasize the magnificent moldings on the ceiling or the carvedpaneling on the walls. The enormous floor-to-ceiling windows that marched uninterruptedly for forty feet alongthe veranda side were heavily curtained in brown velvet, casting a deep gloom over the dingy brown chairs, twostunning malachite benches and two equally beautiful benches in Florentine marble, and a massive fireplace ofcream marble veined in deep pink. On the polished teak floor three Aubusson carpets had been squared withgeometrical precision, and a Waterford chandelier six feet long touched the ceiling, its chain bunched round it.

"You are to be commended, Mrs. Smith," Fee pronounced. "It's positively awful, but spotlessly clean. I shallgive you something worth caring for. Those priceless benches without anything to set them of-it's a shame! Sincethe day I saw this room, I've longed to make it into something every person who walks into it will admire, andyet comfortable enough to make every person who walks into it want to remain."Mary Carson's desk was a Victorian hideousness; Fee walked to it and the phone which stood upon it, flickingits gloomy wood contemptuously. "My escritoire will do beautifully here," she said. "I'm going to start with thisroom, and when it's finished I'll move up from the creek, not before. Then at least we'll have one place where wecan congregate without being depressed." She sat down and plucked the receiver off its hook. While her daughterand her servants stood in a small bewildered huddle, she proceeded to set Harry Gough in motion. Mark Foyswould send fabric samples on the night mail; Nock and Kirbys would send paint samples; Grace Brothers wouldsend wallpaper samples; these and other Sydney stores would send catalogues specially compiled for her,describing their lines of furnishings. Laughter in his voice, Harry guaranteed to produce a competent upholstererand a team of painters capable of doing the meticulous work Fee demanded. Good for Mrs. Cleary! She wasgoing to sweep Mary Carson right out of the house.

The phoning finished, everyone was directed to rip down the brown velvet curtains at once. Out they went ontothe rubbish heap in an orgy of wastefulness Fee supervised personally, even putting the torch to them herself.

"We don't need them," she said, "and I'm not going to inflict them on the Gillanbone poor.""Yes, Mum," said Meggie, paralyzed.

"We're not going to have any curtains," said Fee, not at all disturbed over a flagrant breach of the decoratingcustoms of the time. "The veranda's far too deep to let the sun come in directly, so why do we need curtains? Iwant this room to be seen."The materials arrived, so did the painters and the upholsterer; Meggie and Cat were sent up ladders to wash andpolish the top windows while Mrs. Smith and Minnie coped with the bottom ones and Fee strode aroundwatching everything with an eagle eye.

By the second week in January it was all done, and somehow of course the news leaked out on the party lines.

Mrs. Cleary had made the Drogheda drawing room into a palace, and wouldn't it be only the civil thing for Mrs.

Hopeton to accompany Mrs. King and Mrs. O'Rourke on a welcome-to-the-big-house visit? No one argued thatthe result of Fee's efforts was absolute beauty. The cream Aubusson carpets with their faded bunches of pink andred roses and green leaves had been strewn rather haphazardly around the mirror-finished floor. Fresh creampaint covered the walls and the ceiling, every molding and carving painstakingly picked out in gilt, but the hugeoval-shaped flat spaces in the paneling had been papered with faded black silk bearing the same bunches of rosesas the three carpets, like stilted Japanese paintings in cream and gilt surrounds. The Waterford chandelier hadbeen lowered until its bottom pendant chimed a bare six and a half feet from the floor, every prism of itsthousands polished to a flashing rainbow, and its great brass chain tethered to the wall instead of being bunchedup. On spindly cream-and-gilt tables Waterford lamps stood next to Waterford ashtrays and Waterford vasesstuffed with cream and pink roses; all the big comfortable chairs had been re-covered in cream watered silk andplaced in small cozy groupings with large ottomans drawn up to each one invitingly; in one sunny corner stoodthe exquisite old spinet with an enormous vase of cream and pink roses on it. Above the fireplace hung theportrait of Fee's grandmother in her pale pink crinoline, and facing her at the other end of the room was an evenlarger portrait of a youngish, red-haired Mary Carson, face like the youngish Queen Victoria, in a stiff blackgown fashionably bustled. "All right," said Fee, "now we can move up from the creek. I'll do the other rooms atmy leisure. Oh, isn't it lovely to have money and a decent home to spend it on?"About three days before they moved, so early in the morning the sun had not yet risen, the roosters in the fowlyard were cock-a-doodling joyously. "Miserable wretches," said Fee, wrapping old newspapers around her china.

"I don't know what they think they've done to crow about. Not an egg in the place for breakfast, and all the menat home until we finish moving. Meggie, you'll have to go down to the chook yard for me; I'm busy." Shescanned a yellowed sheet of the Sydney Morning Herald, snorting over an advertisement for wasp-waisted stays.

"I don't know why Paddy insists we get all the newspapers; no one ever has time to read them. They just pile uptoo fast to burn in the stove. Look at this! It's older than our tenancy of the house. Well, at least they're handy forpacking."It was nice to see her mother so cheerful, Meggie thought as she sped down the back steps and across the dustyyard. Though everyone was naturally looking forward to living in the big house, Mum seemed to hunger for it asif she could remember what living in a big house was like. How clever she was, what perfect taste she had!

Things no one had ever realized before, because there had been neither time nor money to bring them out.

Meggie hugged herself with excitement; Daddy had sent in to the Gilly jeweler and used some of the fivethousand pounds to buy Mum a real pearl disbbhoker and real pearl earrings, only these had little diamonds inthem as well. He was going to give them to her at their first dinner in the big house. Now that she had seen hermother's face freed of its habitual dourness, she could hardly wait for the expression it would wear when shereceived her pearls. From Bob to the twins, the children were agog for that moment, because Daddy had shownthem the big flat leather case, opened it to reveal the milky opalescent beads on their black velvet bed. Theirmother's blossoming happiness had affected them deeply; it was like seeing the start of a good drenching rain.

Until now they had never quite understood how unhappy she must have been all the years they had known her.

The chook yard was huge, and held four roosters and upward of forty hens. At night they inhabited a tumbledown shed, its rigorously swept floor lined around the edges with straw-filled orange crates for laying, and itsrear crossed by perches of various heights. But during the day the chooks strutted clucking around a large, wire-netted run. When Meggie opened the run gate and squeezed inside, the birds clustered about her greedily,thinking they would be fed, but since Meggie fed them in the evenings she laughed at their silly antics andstepped through them into the shed.

"Honestly, what a hopeless lot of chookies you are!" she lectured them severely as she poked in the nests.

"Forty of you, and only fifteen eggs! Not enough for breakfast, let alone a cake. Well, I'm warning you here andnow-if you don't do something about it soon, the chopping block for the lot of you, and that applies to the lordsof the coop as well as wives, so don't spread your tails and ruffle up your necks as if I'm not including you,gentlemen!"With the eggs held carefully in her apron, Meggie ran back to the kitchen, singing.

Fee was sitting in Paddy's chair staring at a sheet of Smith's Weekly, her face white, her lips moving. InsideMeggie could hear the men moving about, and the sounds of six-year-old Jims and Patsy laughing in their cot;they were never allowed up until after the men had gone. "What's the matter, Mum?" Meggie asked.

Fee didn't answer, only sat staring in front of her with beads of sweat along her upper lip, eyes stilled to adesperately rational pain, as if within herself she was marshaling every resource she possessed not to scream.

"Daddy, Daddy!" Meggie called sharply, frightened. The tone of her voice brought him out still fastening hisflannel undershirt, with Bob, Jack, Hughie and Stu behind him. Meggie pointed wordlessly at her mother.

Paddy's heart seemed to block his throat. He bent over Fee, his hand picking up one limp wrist. "What is it,dear?" he asked in tones more tender than any of his children had ever heard him use; yet somehow they knewthey were the tones he used with her when they were not around to hear. She seemed to recognize that specialvoice enough to emerge from her shocked trance, and the big grey eyes looked up into his face, so kind andworn, no longer young.

"Here," she said, pointing at a small item of news toward the bottom of the page.

Stuart had gone to stand behind his mother, his hand lightly on her shoulder; before he started to read the articlePaddy glanced up at his son, into the eyes so like Fee's, and he nodded. What had roused him to jealousy inFrank could never do so in Stuart; as if their love for Fee bound them tightly together instead of separating them.

Paddy read out loud, slowly, his tone growing sadder and sadder. The little headline said: BOXER RECEIVESLIFE SENTENCE.

Francis Armstrong Cleary, aged 26, professional boxer, was convicted today in Goulburn District Court of themurder of Ronald Albert Cumming, aged 32, laborer, last July. The jury reached its verdict after only tenminutes' deliberation, recommending the most severe punishment the court could mete out. It was, said Mr.

Justice FitzHugh-Cunneally, a simple open-and-closed case. Cumming and Cleary had quarreled violently in thepublic bar of the Harbor Hotel on July 23rd. Later the same night Sergeant Tom Beardsmore of the Goulburnpolice, accompanied by two constables, was called to the Harbor Hotel by its proprietor, Mr. James Ogilvie. Inthe lane behind the hotel the police discovered Cleary kicking at the head of the insensible Cumming. His fistswere bloodstained and bore tufts of Cumming's hair. When arrested Cleary was drunk but lucid. He was chargedwith assault with intent to commit grievous bodily harm, but the charge was amended to murder after Cummingdied of brain injuries in the Goulburn District Hospital next day. Mr. Arthur Whyte, K.C., entered a plea of notguilty by reason of insanity, but four medical witnesses for the Crown stated unequivocally that under theprovisions of the M'naghten rules Cleary could not be called insane. In addressing the jury,Mr. Justice FitzHugh-Cunneally told them there was no question of guilt or innocence, the verdict was clearlyguilty, but he requested them to take time considering their recommendation for either clemency or severity, ashe would be guided by their opinion. When sentencing Cleary, Mr. Justice FitzHugh-Cunneally called his act"subhuman savagery," and regretted that the drunken unpremeditated nature of the crime precluded hanging, ashe regarded Cleary's hands as a weapon quite as deadly as a gun or knife. Cleary was sentenced to lifeimprisonment at hard labor, the sentence to be served in Goulburn Gaol, this institution being one designed forviolently disposed prisoners. Asked if he had anything so say, Cleary answered, "Just don't tell my mother."Paddy looked at the top of the page to see the date: December 6, 1925. "It happened over three years ago," hesaid helplessly. No one answered him or moved, for no one knew what to do; from the front of the house camethe gleeful laughter of the twins, their high voices raised in chatter. was "Just-don't-tell my mother,"" said Feenumbly. "And no one did! Oh, God! My poor, poor Frank!"Paddy wiped the tears from his face with the back of his free hand, then squatted down in front of her, pattingher lap gently. "Fee dear, pack your things. We'll go to him."She half-rose before sinking back, her eyes in her small white face starred and glistening as if dead, pupils hugeand gold-filmed. "I can't go," she said without a hint of agony, yet making everyone feel that the agony wasthere. "It would kill him to see me. Oh, Paddy, it would kill him! I know him so well-his pride, his ambition, hisdetermination to be someone important. Let him bear the shame alone, it's what he wants. You read it. "Just don'ttell my mother." We've got to help him keep his secret. What good will it do him or us to see him?"Paddy was still weeping, but not for Frank; for the life which had gone from Fee's face, for the dying in hereyes. A Jonah, that's what the lad had always been; the bitter bringer of blight, forever standing between Fee andhimself, the cause of her withdrawal from his heart and the hearts of his children. Every time it looked as if theremight be happiness in store for Fee, Frank took it away. But Paddy's love for her was as deep and impossible toeradicate as hers was for Frank; he could never use the lad as his whipping boy again, not after that night in thepresbytery. So he said, "Well, Fee, if you think it's better not to attempt to get in touch with him, we won't. YetI'd like to know he was all right, that whatever can be done for him is being done. How about if I write to Fatherde Bricassart and ask him to look out for Frank?"The eyes didn't liven, but a faint pink stole into her cheeks. "Yes, Paddy, do that. Only make sure he knows notto tell Frank we found out. Perhaps it would ease Frank to think for certain that we don't know."Within a few days Fee regained most of her energy, and her interest in redecorating the big house kept heroccupied. But her quietness became dour again, only less grim, encapsulated by an expressionless calm. Itseemed she cared more for how the big house would eventually look than she did for her family's welfare.

Perhaps she assumed they could look after themselves spiritually, and that Mrs. Smith and the maids were thereto look after them physically.

Yet the discovery of Frank's plight had profoundly affected everyone. The older boys grieved deeply for theirmother, spent sleepless nights remembering her face at that awful moment. They loved her, and her cheerfulnessduring the previous few weeks had given them a glimpse of her which was never to leave them, and was toinspire them with a passionate desire to bring it back again. If their father had been the pivot upon which theirlives turned until then, from that moment their mother was put alongside him. They began to treat her with atender, absorbed care no amount of indifference on her part could banish. From Paddy to Stu the Cleary malesconspired to make Fee's life whatever she wanted, and they demanded adherence to this end from everyone. Noone must ever harm her or hurt her again. And when Paddy presented her with the pearls she took them with abrief, expressionless word of thanks, no pleasure or interest in her perusal; but everyone was thinking howdifferent her reaction would have been were it not for Frank. Had the move to the big house not occurred, poorMeggie would have suffered a great deal more than she did, for without admitting her into full, exclusively malemembership of the protect-Mum society (perhaps sensing that her participation was more grudging than theirs),her father and older brothers expected that Meggie should shoulder all the tasks Fee obviously found repugnant.

As it turned out, Mrs. Smith and the maids shared the burden with Meggie. Chiefly repugnant to Fee was the careof her two youngest sons, but Mrs. Smith assumed full charge of Jims and Patsy with such ardor Meggie couldn'tfeel sorry for her, instead in a way she felt glad that these two could at last belong entirely to the housekeeper.

Meggie grieved for her mother, too, but by no means as wholeheartedly as the men, for her loyalties were sorelytried; the big vein of motherliness in her was deeply offended by Fee's mounting indifference to Jims and Patsy.

When I have my children, she would think to herself, I'm never going to love one of them more than the rest.

Living in the big house was certainly very different. At first it was strange to have a bedroom to oneself, and forthe women, not to have to worry about any sort of household duty, inside or outside. Minnie, Cat and Mrs. Smithamong them coped with everything from washing and ironing to cooking and cleaning, and were horrified byoffers of help. In return for plenty of food and a small wage, an endless procession of swaggies were temporarilyentered on the station books as rouseabouts, to chop the wood for the homestead fires, feed the fowls and pigs,do the milking, help old Tom take care of the lovely gardens, do all the heavy cleaning. Paddy had beencommunicating with Father Ralph. "The income from Mary's estate comes to roughly four million pounds a year,thanks to the fact that Michar Limited is a privately owned company with most of its assets sunk in steel, shipsand mining," wrote Father Ralph. "So what I've assigned to you is a mere drop in the Carson bucket, and doesn'teven amount to one-tenth of Drogheda station profits in a year. Don't worry about bad years, either. TheDrogheda station account is so heavily in the black I can pay you out of its interest forever, if necessary. So whatmoney comes to you is no more than you deserve, and doesn't dent Michar Limited. It's station money you'regetting, not company money. I require no more of you than to keep the station books up to date and honestlyentered for the auditors."It was after he had this particular letter that Paddy held a conference in the beautiful drawing room on a nightwhen everyone was at home. He sat with his steel rimmed reading half-glasses perched on his Roman nose, in abig cream chair, his feet comfortably disposed on a matching ottoman, his pipe in a Waterford ashtray.

"How nice this is." He smiled, looking around with pleasure. "I think we ought to give Mum a vote of thanksfor it, don't you, boys?" There were murmurs of assent from the "boys"; Fee inclined her head from where she satin what had been Mary Carson's wing chair, re-covered now in cream watered silk. Meggie curled her feetaround the ottoman she had chosen instead of a chair, and kept her eyes doggedly on the sock she was mending.

"Well, Father de Bricassart has sorted everything out and has been very generous," Paddy continued. "He's putseven thousand pounds in the bank in my name, and opened a savings account for everyone with two thousandpounds in each. I am to be paid four thousand pounds a year as the station manager, and Bob will be paid threethousand a year as the assistant manager. All the working boys-Jack, Hughie and Stu-would be paid twothousand a year, and the little boys are to get one thousand a year each until they're old enough to decide whatthey want to do.

"When the little boys are grown up, the estate will guarantee each of them a yearly income equal to a fullworking member of Drogheda, even if they don't want to work on Drogheda. When Jims and Patsy turn twelve,they'll be sent to Riverview College in Sydney to board and be educated at the expense of the estate.

"Mum is to have two thousand pounds a year for herself, and so is Meggie. The household account will be keptat five thousand pounds, though why Father thinks we need so much to run a house, I don't know. He says incase we want to make major alterations. I have his instructions as to how much Mrs. Smith, Minnie, Cat andTom are to be paid, and I must say he's generous. Other wages I decide on myself. But my first decision asmanager is to put on at least six more stockmen, so Drogheda can be run as it should be. It's too much for ahandful." That was the most he ever said about his sister's management. No one had ever heard of having somuch money; they sat silent, trying to assimilate their good fortune.

"We'll never spend the half of it, Paddy," said Fee. "He hasn't left us anything to spend it on."Paddy looked at her gently. "I know, Mum. But isn't it nice to think we'll never have to worry about moneyagain?" He cleared his throat. "Now it seems to me that Mum and Meggie in particular are going to be at a bit ofa loose end," he went on. "I was never much good at figures, but Mum can add and subtract and divide andmultiply like an arithmetic teacher. So Mum is going to be the Drogheda bookkeeper, instead of Harry Gough'soffice. I never realized it, but Harry has employed one chap just to deal with Drogheda's accounts, and at themoment he's a man short, so he doesn't mind passing it back to us at all. In fact, he was the one who suggestedMum might make a good bookkeeper. He's going to send someone out from Gilly to teach you properly, Mum.

It's quite complicated, apparently. You've got to balance the ledgers, the cash books, the journals, recordeverything in the log book, and so on. Enough to keep you pretty busy, only it won't take the starch out of youthe way cooking and washing did, will it?"It was on the tip of Meggie's tongue to shout: What about me? I did just as much washing and cooking as Mum!

Fee was actually smiling, for the first time since the news about Frank. "I'll enjoy the job, Paddy, really I will. Itwill make me feel like a part of Drogheda.""Bob is going to teach you how to drive the new Rolls, because you're going to have to be the one to go intoGilly to the bank and see Harry. Besides, it will do you good to know you can drive anywhere you want withoutdepending on one of us being around. We're too isolated out here. I've always meant to teach you girls how todrive, but there's never been the time before. All right, Fee?""All right, Paddy," she said happily.

"Now, Meggie, we've got to deal with you."Meggie laid her sock and needle down, looked up at her father in a mixture of inquiry and resentment, sure sheknew what he was going to say: her mother would be busy with the books, so it would be her job to supervise thehouse and its environs.

"I'd hate to see you turn into an idle, snobby miss like some of the graziers' daughters we know," Paddy saidwith a smile which robbed his words of any contempt. "So I'm going to put you to work at a full-time job, too,wee Meggie. You're going to look after the inside paddocks for us-Borehead, Creek, Carson, Winnemurra andNorth Tank. You're also going to look after the Home Paddock. You'll be responsible for the stock horses, whichones are working and which ones are being spelled. During musters and lambing we'll all pitch in together, ofcourse, but otherwise you'll manage on your own, I reckon. Jack can teach you to work the dogs and use a stockwhip. You're a terrible tomboy still, so I thought you might like to work in the paddocks more than lie around thehouse," he finished, smiling more broadly than ever. Resentment and discontent had flown out the window whilehe talked; he was once more Daddy, who loved her and thought of her. What had been the matter with her, todoubt him so? She was so ashamed of herself she felt like jabbing the big darning needle into her leg, but shewas too happy to contemplate self-infliction of pain for very long, and anyway, it was just an extravagant way ofexpressing her remorse.

Her face shone. "Oh, Daddy, I'll love it!""What about me, Daddy?" asked Stuart.

"The girls don't need you around the house anymore, so you'll be out in the paddocks again, Stu.""All right, Daddy." He looked at Fee longingly, but said nothing.

Fee and Meggie learned to drive the new Rolls Royce Mary Carson had taken delivery of a week before shedied, and Meggie learned to work the dogs while Fee learned to keep the books.

If it hadn't been for Father Ralph's continued absence, Meggie for one would have been absolutely happy. Thiswas what she had always longed to do: be out there in the paddocks astride a horse, doing stockman's work. Yetthe ache for Father Ralph was always there, too, the memory of his kiss something to be dreamed about,treasured, felt again a thousand times. However, memory wasn't a patch on reality; try as she would, the actualsensation couldn't be conjured up, only a shadow of it, like a thin sad cloud. When he wrote to tell them aboutFrank, her hopes that he would use this as a pretext to visit them were abruptly shattered. His description of thetrip to see Frank in Goulburn Gaol was carefully worded, stripped of the pain it had engendered, giving no hintof Frank's steadily worsening psychosis. He had tried vainly to have Frank committed to Morisset asylum for thecriminally insane, but no one had listened. So he simply passed on an idealistic image of a Frank resigned topaying for his sins to society, and in a passage heavily underlined told Paddy Frank had no idea they knew whathad happened. It had come to his ears, he assured Frank, through Sydney newspapers, and he would make surethe family never knew. After being told this, Frank settled better, he said, and left it at that. Paddy talked ofselling Father Ralph's chestnut mare. Meggie used the rangy black gelding she had ridden for pleasure as a stockhorse, for it was lighter-mouthed and nicer in nature than the moody mares or mean geldings in the yards. Stockhorses were intelligent, and rarely placid. Even a total absence of stallions didn't make them very amiableanimals. "Oh, please, Daddy, I can ride the chestnut, too!" Meggie pleaded. "Think how awful it would be if afterall his kindnesses to us, Father should come back to visit and discover we had sold his horse!" Paddy stared ather thoughtfully. "Meggie, I don't think Father will come back.""But he might! You never know!"The eyes so like Fee's were too much for him; he couldn't bring himself to hurt her more than she was alreadyhurt, poor little thing. "All right then, Meggie, we'll keep the mare, but make sure you use both the mare and thegelding regularly, for I won't have a fat horse on Drogheda, do you hear?" Until then she hadn't liked to useFather Ralph's own mount, but after that she alternated to give both the animals in the stables a chance to workoff their oats.

It was just as well Mrs. Smith, Minnie and Cat doted on the twins, for with Meggie out in the paddocks and Feesitting for hours at her escritoire in the drawing room, the two little fellows had a wonderful time. They were intoeverything, but with such glee and constant good humor that no one could be angry with them for very long. Atnight in her little house Mrs. Smith, long converted to Catholicism, knelt to her prayers with such deepthankfulness in her heart she could scarcely contain it. Children of her own had never come to gladden her whenRob had been alive, and for years the big house had been childless, its occupants forbidden to mix with theinhabitants of the stockmen's houses down by the eek. Rut when the Clarrys came they were Mary Carson's kin,and there were children at last. Especially now, with Jims and Patsy permanent residents of the big house.

It had been a dry winter, and the summer rains didn't come. Knee-high and lush, the tawny grass dried out in thestark sun until even the inner core of each blade was crisp. To look across the paddocks required slitted eyes anda hat brim drawn far down on the forehead; the grass was mirror-silver, and little spiral whirlwinds sped busilyamong shimmering blue mirages, trans-ferring dead leaves and fractured grass blades from one restless heap toanother.

Oh, but it was dry! Even the trees were dry, the bark falling from them in stiff, crunchy ribbons. No danger yetof the sheep starving-the grass would last another year at least, maybe more-but no one liked to see everything sodry. There was always a good chance the rain would not come next year, or the year after. In a good year theygot ............