FullReads

But while we were at tea a little girl came with a message that Mrs Baker wanted to see us, and would be very much obliged if we’d call up as soon as possible. You see, in those small towns you can’t move without the thing getting round inside of half an hour.

‘We’ll have to face the music now!’ said Andy, ‘and no get out of it.’ He seemed to hang back more than I did. There was another pub. opposite where Mrs Baker lived, and when we got up the street a bit I said to Andy–

‘Suppose we go and have another drink first, Andy? We might be kept in there an hour or two.’

‘You don’t want another drink,’ said Andy, rather short. ‘Why, you seem to be going the same way as the Boss!’ But it was Andy that edged off towards the pub. when we got near Mrs Baker’s place. ‘All right!’ he said. ‘Come on! We’ll have this other drink, since you want it so bad.’

We had the drink, then we buttoned up our coats and started across the road–we’d bought new shirts and collars, and spruced up a bit. Half-way across Andy grabbed my arm and asked–

‘How do you feel now, Jack?’

‘Oh, I’M all right,’ I said.

‘For God’s sake!’ said Andy, ‘don’t put your foot in it and make a mess of it.’

‘I won’t, if you don’t.’

Mrs Baker’s cottage was a little weather-board box affair back in a garden. When we went in through the gate Andy gripped my arm again and whispered–

‘For God’s sake stick to me now, Jack!’

‘I’ll stick all right,’ I said–‘you’ve been having too much beer, Andy.’

I had seen Mrs Baker before, and remembered her as a cheerful, contented sort of woman, bustling about the house and getting the Boss’s shirts and things ready when we started North. Just the sort of woman that is contented with housework and the children, and with nothing particular about her in the way of brains. But now she sat by the fire looking like the ghost of herself. I wouldn’t have recognised her at first. I never saw such a change in a woman, and it came like a shock to me.

Her sister let us in, and after a first glance at Mrs Baker I had eyes for the sister and no one else. She was a Sydney girl, about twenty-four or twenty-five, and fresh and fair–not like the sun-browned women we were used to see. She was a pretty, bright-eyed girl, and seemed quick to understand, and very sympathetic. She had been educated, Andy had told me, and wrote stories for the Sydney ‘Bulletin’ and other Sydney papers. She had her hair done and was dressed in the city style, and that took us back a bit at first.

‘It’s very good of you to come,’ said Mrs Baker in a weak, weary voice, when we first went in. ‘I heard you were in town.’

‘We were just coming when we got your message,’ said Andy. ‘We’d have come before, only we had to see to the horses.’

‘It’s very kind of you, I’m sure,’ said Mrs Baker.

They wanted us to have tea, but we said we’d just had it. Then Miss Standish (the sister) wanted us to have tea and cake; but we didn’t feel as if we could handle cups and saucers and pieces of cake successfully just then.

There was something the matter with one of the children in a back-room, and the sister went to see to it. Mrs Baker cried a little quietly.

‘You mustn’t mind me,’ she said. ‘I’ll be all right presently, and then I want you to tell me all about poor Bob. It’s seeing you, that saw the last of him, that set me off.’

Andy and I sat stiff and straight, on two chairs against the wall, and held our hats tight, and stared at a picture of Wellington meeting Blucher on the opposite wall. I thought it was lucky that that picture was there.