Linton.
"Yes," said Mrs. Brown, "it do. But what the station'll do is more'n I
can see just at present--an' as for you, sir--an' let alone me--" Her
comfortable, fat voice died away, and the apron was at her eyes again.
"What'll Billabong be, with its little girl at school?"
"At--WHERE?" asked Norah.
She had come in with the tea-tray in her hands--a little flushed from
the fire, and her brown face alight with all the hundred-and-one things
she had yet to tell Daddy. On the threshold she paused, struck
motionless by that amazing speech. She looked a little helplessly from
one face to the other; and the two who loved her felt the same
helplessness as they looked back. It was not an easy thing to pass
sentence of exile from Billabong on Norah.
"I--" said her father. "You see, dear--Dick having gone--you know, your
aunt--" He stopped, his tongue tied by the look in Norah's eyes.
Brownie slipped into the breach.
"You're so big now, dearie," she said, "so, big--and--and--" With this
lucid effort at enlightenment she put her apron fairly over her head
and turned away to the open window.
But Norah's eyes were on her father. Just for a moment the sick sense
of bewilderment and despair seemed to crush her altogether. She had
realized her sentence in a flash--that the home that meant all the world
to her, and from which Heaven only differed in that Mother was there,
was to be changed for a new, strange world that would be empty of all
that she knew and loved.
Pages:
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32