Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land | Page 9

just the person I'm wanting to speak to, so come along.'
'Good for me, Joan,' and the man came along, clearing the rest of the garden path and the veranda steps in three strides.
He gripped Mrs Gildea's hand.
'You're nice and cool up here, and you get every bit of wind that's going along the river,' he said. 'It's a good thing you kept this humpey, Joan--a little nest for the bird to fly home to, eh?'
'Yes, I'm glad, though it seemed a silly piece of sentiment . . . and, as you say, I always FELT the old bird might want to fly home for a bit some day. Well, YOU look cool enough, Colin.'
'This is temperate zone for me after the Leura. . . . But it's a hot March because we haven't had a proper rainy season, and I'll just stand here and catch the breeze for a minute or two before I sit down.'
He balanced himself on the veranda railing: took off his broad-brimmed Panama hat and mopped his forehead with a silk handkerchief. Mrs Gildea surveyed him with interested admiration.
A big man--large-limbed, bony--a typical Scotcher in that--with thin flanks, a well-set up back and massive shoulders. His face was browny-red all over except where the skin ran white under the hair and there was a ruddier ring round the upper part of the throat. His nose was thin between the eyes, broadening lower, high-bridged and with high cut nostrils, showing the sensitive red when he was enraged--as not infrequently happened. He had large honest blue eyes, intensely blue, of the fiery description with a trick of dropping the lids when he was in doubt or consideration. They were expressive eyes, as a rule keen and hard, but they could soften unexpectedly under the influence of emotion. At other times, according to the quality of the emotion, they glowed literally like blue flames. He was considered queer-tempered, rather sulky, and his face often took on a very unyielding expression.
He had thick reddish-yellow eyebrows at the base of a slightly receding forehead--wanting in benevolence, phrenologists would have said, and with the bump of self-esteem considerably developed. His hair was yellow, pure and simple--the color of spun silk, only coarser, and it would have curled at the ends had he not worn it close-cropped. His moustache and beard were rather deeper yellow, the beard short, well-shaped--the cut of Colin McKeith's beard was almost his only vanity--there was one other, the 'millionare strut' in town--and he had the masculine habit of stroking and clasping his beard with his large open-fingered hand--spatulate tips to his digits, the practical hand--fairly well kept, though brown and hairy.
There were lines in his face and a way of setting his features--that a man gets when he has to front straight some cruel facts of human existance--to calculate at a glance the chances of death from a black's spear, a lost trail, an empty water-bag, the horns of a charging bullock or even worse things than these.
And such experiences had put a stamp on him, and distinguished him from the ordinary ruck of men--these and his undeniable manliness, and good looks.
He smiled as he glanced amusedly from the littered wind-blown papers on the table to his hostess' rather troubled face.
'Well you seem to have a pretty fair show here of what you call "copy,"' he said.
Mrs Gildea met his look with one of frank pleasure.
'That's what I want YOU for.'
'What's the job?' he asked. 'You ought to know that literary "copy" is not much in my line. Now if it had been yarding the fowls or cleaning up the garden, I'd feel more at home as a lady's help.'
'Colin, you take me back to Bungroopim--when it happened to be a slack day for you on the run, and when the married couple had levanted and I'd got an incompetent black-gin in the kitchen--or when the store wanted tidying and you and I had a good old spree amongst the rubbish.'
He laughed at a time-honoured joke.
'Stick sugar-mats and weevilly four-bins; and a breeding paddock of tarantulas and centipedes and white lizards to clear out. I WAS a bush hobbledehoy in those days, Joan. It's close on twenty years ago.'
Joan Gildea gave a little shudder.
'Don't remind me how old I am. There's the difference between a man and a woman. My life's behind me: yours in front of you.'
'I don't know about that, Joan. I've had my spell of roughing it-- droving, mining, pioneering--humping bluey along the track-- stoney-broke: sold up by the bank and only just beginning now to find out what Australia's worth.'
'That's what I said--you are just beginning. Roughing it has made a splendid man of you, Colin: and who would ever believe that you are four years older than I am. Colin, you ought to