"No, that's all," said Hugh. "Well, I'll send the boy to run in
the horses. I'll take four horses in the big waggonette; I expect
she'll be waiting at Donohoe's--that is, if she left the railway-station
in the coach--if she is at Donohoe's I'll be back before dark."
With this he went back to the office, and his mother and Miss
Harriott went their separate ways to prepare for the comfort of
the heiress. To Ellen Harriott the arrival was a new excitement, a
change in the monotony of bush life; but to the old lady and Hugh
it meant a great deal more. It meant that they would be no longer
master and mistress of the big station on which they had lived so
long, and which was now so much under their control that it seemed
almost like their own.
Everything depended on what the girl was like. They had never
even seen a photograph of her, and awaited her coming in a state of
nervous expectancy. All over the district they had been practically
considered owners of the big station; Hugh had taken on and dismissed
employees at his will, had controlled the buying and selling of
thousands of sheep and cattle, and now this strange girl was to
come in with absolute power over them. They would be servants and
dependants on the station, which had once belonged to them.
After Hugh had gone, the old lady sat back in her armchair and
read over again her letter from Mr. Grant; and, lest it should be
thought that that gentleman had only one side to his character, it
is as well for the reader to know what was in the letter. It ran
as follows:-Dear Mrs. Gordon, I am writing to you about a most important matter. Colonel Selwyn
is dead, and my daughter has come out from England. I don't know
anyone to take charge of her except yourself. I am an old man now,
and set in my ways, and this girl is really all I have to live
for. Looking back on my life, I see where I have been a fool; and
perhaps the good fortune that has followed me has been more luck
than anything else. Your husband was a smarter man than I am, and
he came to grief, though I will say that I always warned him against
that Western place.
Do you remember the old days when we had the two little homesteads,
and I used to ride down from the out-station of a Saturday and
spend Sunday with you and Andrew, and talk over the fortunes we
were going to make? If I had met a woman like you in those days I
might have been a better man. As it was, I made a fool of myself.
But that's all past praying for.