An Outback Marriage by Banjo Paterson (the mitten read aloud TXT) 📕

what Mr. Blake tells me, I daresay this woman can give you a lot of trouble and annoyance. Whatever you pay her, you won’t miss the money. You will save the family here from being turned out; you will avoid scandal; and if there should be any foundation for Mr. Blake’s story, it may mean that if you don’t settle you lose everything.”

From him Mary Grant turned to the old lady.

“Mrs. Gordon,” she said, “do you advise me to pay this money?”

“My dear, I don’t advise at all. Don’t consider us in the matter at all. It is for you to say.”

“Then I will pay nothing. It is a cruel, infamous, wicked slander. These poor, ignorant people don’t know what they are doing. Sooner than pay one penny in compromise, I will walk off this station a pauper. God will not let such villainy win. Mrs. Gordon, surely you don’t think that I ought to blacken my father’s and mother’s name by paying money to keep this claim quiet?”

Here Pinnock broke in on her speech. “But if they should manage to produce evidence⁠—”

“Let them produce it, and let the judge believe it if he likes. You and I and everybody know that it is a lie; even if they win the case, it is still a lie. I will pay nothing⁠—not one halfpenny. My mother’s name is more than all the money in the world, and I will not blacken it by compromises. Mr. Pinnock, the case is to be fought out, and if we lose we shall still know that justice is on our side; but if we pay money⁠—”

Mrs. Gordon took her hand, and lifted it to her lips.

“I think you are quite right, my dear. You put us all to shame for even thinking of it.”

“I am very sorry, Mr. Blake,” the girl went on, “very sorry indeed that you should have come here on such an errand. You saved my life, and if I could pay you for that I would; but this offer is an insult, and I hope that you will never come here again. Whether I am turned out of the old station or not, I hope that you will never come here again.” And with that the two ladies walked out, leaving the lawyers looking at each other.

“I am afraid, Mr. Blake” said Pinnock at last, “that we have lost any hope we might ever have had of settling this case.”

But Blake, as he rode homewards, felt that he had lost forever a much higher hope. He had played for a high stake on two chances. One of them had failed him. There remained only the chance of pulling Peggy’s case through; and he swore that if hard work, skill, and utter unscrupulousness could win that case, it should be won.

XXII A Nurse and Her Assistant

While they were waiting for the great case to come on a sort of depression seemed to spread itself over the station. The owner was mostly shut up in her room with her thoughts; the old lady was trying to comfort her, and Ellen Harriott, with sorrow always at her heart, went about the household work like an automaton. No wonder that as soon as breakfast was over all the men cleared out to work on the run. But one day it so happened that Carew did not go out with the others. The young Englishman was a poor correspondent, and had promised himself a whole quiet day to be spent in explaining by letter to his people at home the mysterious circumstances under which he had found and lost Patrick Henry Considine. Ellen Harriott found him in the office manfully wrestling with some extra long words, and stopped for a few minutes’ talk. She had a liking for the young Englishman, and any talk was better than to be left alone with her thoughts.

“These are bad times for the old station, Mr. Carew,” she said. “We don’t know what is going to happen next.”

Carew was not going to haul down the flag just yet. “I believe everything’ll come all right in the long run, don’t you know,” he said. “Never give up first hit, you know; see it out⁠—eh, what?”

“I want to get away out of this for a while,” she said. “I am run down. I think the bush monotony tells on women. I don’t want anyone to fall sick, but I do wish I could get a little nursing to do again⁠—just for a change. I would nurse Red Mick himself.”

Is there anything in telepathy? Do coming events sometimes send warnings on ahead? Certain it is that, even as she spoke, a rider on a sweating horse was seen coming at full speed up the flat; he put his horse over the sliprails that led into the house paddock without any hesitation, and came on at a swinging gallop.

“What is this?” said Ellen Harriott, “more trouble? It is only trouble that comes so fast. Why, it is one of Red Mick’s nephews!” By this time the rider was up to them; without dismounting he called out “Miss! Please, Miss! There’s been an accident. My uncle got run agin a tree and he’s all smashed in the head. I’m off to the Doctor now; I’ll get the Doctor here by tomorrow night, and would you go out and do aught you can for Mick? There’s no one out there but old Granny, and she’s helpless like. Will you go?”

“Is he much hurt?”

“I’m afraid he’s killed, Miss. I found him, He’d been out all night and the side of his head all busted. After a dingo he was⁠—I seen the tracks. Coming back from Gavan Blake’s he must ’a’ seen the dorg off the track, and the colt he was on was orkard like and must have hit him agen a tree. The colt kem home with the saddle under his belly, and I run the tracks back till I found him. Will you go out, Miss?”

“Yes,” said Ellen,