Robbery Under Arms - Rolf Boldrewood (most important books of all time .TXT) 📗

her out for the time she always worked things by kindness, and would lead us straight if she could. Driven, she knew we couldn’t be; and I believe she did us about ten times as much good that way as if she had scolded and raged, or even sneered at us.

When we rode up to Mr. Storefield’s farm we were quite agreeable and pleasant again, Jim makin’ believe his horse could walk fastest, and saying that her mare’s pace was only a double shuffle of an amble like Bilbah’s, and she declaring that the mare’s was a true walk⁠—and so it was. The mare could do pretty well everything but talk, and all her paces were first-class.

Old Mrs. Storefield was pottering about in the garden with a big sunbonnet on. She was a great woman for flowers.

“Come along in, Aileen, my dear,” she said. “Gracey’s in the dairy; she’ll be out directly. George only came home yesterday. Who be these you’ve got with ye? Why, Dick!” she says, lookin’ again with her sharp, old, gray eyes, “it’s you, boy, is it? Well, you’ve changed a deal too; and Jim too. Is he as full of mischief as ever? Well, God bless you, boys, I wish you well! I wish you well. Come in out of the sun, Aileen; and one of you take the horses up to the stable. You’ll find George there somewhere.”

Aileen had jumped down by this time, and had thrown her rein to Jim, so we rode up to the stable, and a very good one it was, not long put up, that we could see. How the place had changed, and how different it was from ours! We remembered the time when their hut wasn’t a patch on ours, when old Isaac Storefield, that had been gardener at Mulgoa to some of the big gentlemen in the old days, had saved a bit of money and taken up a farm; but bit by bit their place had been getting better and bigger every year, while ours had stood still and now was going back.

XV

George Storefield’s place, for the old man was dead and all the place belonged to him and Gracey, quite stunned Jim and me. We’d been away more than a year, and he’d pulled down the old fences and put up new ones⁠—first-rate work it was too; he was always a dead hand at splitting. Then there was a big hay-shed, chock-full of good sweet hay and wheat sheaves, and, last of all, the new stable, with six stalls and a loft above, and racks, all built of ironbark slabs, as solid and reg’lar as a church, Jim said.

They’d a good six-roomed cottage and a new garden fence ever so long. There were more fruit trees in the garden and a lot of good draught horses standing about, that looked well, but as if they’d come off a journey.

The stable door opens, and out comes old George as hearty as ever, but looking full of business.

“Glad to see you, boys,” he says; “what a time you’ve been away! Been away myself these three months with a lot of teams carrying. I’ve taken greatly to the business lately. I’m just settling up with my drivers, but put the horses in, there’s chaff and corn in the mangers, and I’ll be down in a few minutes. It’s well on to dinnertime, I see.”

We took the bridles off and tied up the horses⁠—there was any amount of feed for them⁠—and strolled down to the cottage again.

“Wonder whether Gracey’s as nice as she used to be,” says Jim. “Next to Aileen I used to think she wasn’t to be beat. When I was a little chap I believed you and she must be married for certain. And old George and Aileen. I never laid out anyone for myself, I remember.”

“The first two don’t look like coming off,” I said. “You’re the likeliest man to marry and settle if Jeanie sticks to you.”

“She’d better go down to the pier and drown herself comfortably,” said Jim. “If she knew what was before us all, perhaps she would. Poor little Jeanie! We’d no right to drag other people into our troubles. I believe we’re getting worse and worse. The sooner we’re shot or locked up the better.”

“You won’t think so when it comes, old man,” I said. “Don’t bother your head⁠—it ain’t the best part of you⁠—about things that can’t be helped. We’re not the only horses that can’t be kept on the course⁠—with a good turn of speed too.”

“ ‘They want shooting like the dingoes,’ as Aileen said. They’re never no good, except to ruin those that back ’em and disgrace their owners and the stable they come out of. That’s our sort, all to pieces. Well, we’d better come in. Gracey’ll think we’re afraid to face her.”

When we went away last Grace Storefield was a little over seventeen, so now she was nineteen all out, and a fine girl she’d grown. Though I never used to think her a beauty, now I almost began to think she must be. She wasn’t tall, and Aileen looked slight alongside of her; but she was wonderful fair and fresh coloured for an Australian girl, with a lot of soft brown hair and a pair of clear blue eyes that always looked kindly and honestly into everybody’s face. Every look of her seemed to wish to do you good and make you think that nothing that wasn’t square and right and honest and true could live in the same place with her.

She held out both hands to me and said⁠—

“Well, Dick, so you’re back again. You must have been to the end of the world, and Jim, too. I’m very glad to see you both.”

She looked into my face with that pleased look that put me in mind of her when she was a little child and used to come toddling up to me, staring and smiling all over