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She opened a small fridge and found a chicken salad laid out. A cupboard nearby produced crisp rolls. She put both on a tray and took the meal to the window, and there she sat and ate. There was a little breeze turning the leaves of a tree outside. It was rather a warm breeze, for these were the hotter latitudes, but there was a crispness somewhere, and that would be because this was a mountain top ... many mountains but one top. It would make for crispness. The meal finished, Paddy leaned right out of the window and took a deep breath. It was quite exhilarating; no wonder bloodstock prospered here.

Not quite in keeping with plateau air and horses, though, was the large dish of bananas on the bench— apples seemed more in keeping with horses; but Paddy was to learn afterwards that with so many banana plantations literally at their feet, and one of them belonging to the stud, bananas were always there for the taking. She took one now, peeled it in the four ribbons that bananas should be peeled, and looked around her again.

That door through which she had come ... no, been pushed ... was his. She saw there was a corresponding door almost opposite, apparently belonging to the boys’ side, and she went curiously across. They were not there, he had said, but there was nothing to stop her looking around. She saw a key hanging on a hook, and applied it. The key turned and she entered the wards’ domain.

It was a much larger unit than her own, nearer the size, she decided, of the main section, his section. But even with bedrooms to spare the boys had still evidently elected to sleep in one room, and Paddy smiled gently at that. How they clung together, these unbelonging ones; they would quibble, actively fight on many occasions, but they all shared that deep-down bond, that fellow need. Poor little ones, she thought tenderly, then clapped her hand to her mouth. She was dealing with four teenagers, not juniors, and Magnus David was waiting to see how she would do it. What he had done himself, Paddy
saw
ungraciously, was quite faultless. The room was cheerful yet not consciously so. It was bright and casual. It was home. It seemed she had something to keep up with, she grimaced.

She left the room ... more a dormitory with its four beds covered in tartan weave ... and looked in at the quite huge kitchen. Good, she liked a huge kitchen, particularly since she was a firm believer in families, children families, eating in the kitchen. Not only did it make it easier for that extra slice of toast, the need for which invariably cropped up, but it bound the eaters closer together in some homely way. She was pleased to see that the housekeeper evidently shared the same views, for there were several signs of the last meal still present ... an unrolled napkin, a crumb on the floor, a salt shaker still sitting in the middle of the long scrubbed table.

She looked into the other room, the hobby or recreation room, she guessed, expecting a record player, the customary games, bits of wire and pliers as someone tried their hand on a crystal set, the usual things teenage boys like to do, but she found very little. However, she did find horses. Pictures of horses on the wall, books about horses on the table, ribbons, several trophies and actually a saddle that one of them must be mending.

Oh, yes, Mr Magnus David, she said aloud, you've done yourself very well indeed. You can't possibly lose here.

There was nothing else to look at, so Paddy went back to her tucked-in unit and decided to run a bath.

She took her time in the tub. She was tired, but she felt sure she would not sleep tonight, so she delayed going to bed for as long as she could. Though it was past twelve when at last she did make a move, the lights in the master flat were still on, she could see them when she leaned out of the window for a last breath of wonderful air. So he was not sleeping yet either.

Paddy put her own light out, got into a very comfortable bed, prepared for hours of introspection ... and slept at once.

She was awakened by a noise that sounded like a marching army. It was daylight, and the morning sun was buttering the windowsill, yet barely so. It must be very early, judged Paddy of the meagre yellow, and she cuddled gratefully back into the rugs again.

But a second noise prevented her from slipping off, and she resentfully opened her eyes to see what was happening. She could discover nothing, then, about to dismiss it as imagination, she saw—an eye. She must be dreaming things. Solitary eyes do not suddenly appear in a crack of a blind unless there is something behind them. Paddy got out of her bed and approached the eye.

It was blue -and young, one could always tell the eyes of the young, for they were extra clear. But how ... and why ... and what if the eye, and what went with the eye, fell ? The house was elevated, its ground floor given over to garages, so any fall would be most distressing.

Paddy pulled up the blind. It was the slatted type and that was why. she had been able to see the eye and the eye see her. She heard a noise as though something or someone was trying to retreat in a hurry, then another noise as a ladder, or a plank, fell.

She looked down on the horrified face of a smallish boy and was horrified herself. Evidently he had crawled across to the window from the next-door window on a rigged plank, and the rigging had loosened and the plank had fallen to the ground. That would be the noise she had just heard.

‘Help me,’ said the boy, and, deciding it was no time to deliver a lecture, not with such a drop to the ground, Paddy complied. He must be the youngest ward, she thought gratefully, grateful because anything more than his height and weight would have been beyond her strength. She supported him until he got a footing, then helped him haul himself into her room. There he stood apprehensively awaiting her censure.

‘Well?’ asked Paddy sternly.

‘I’m sorry.’ A pause. ‘Don’t tell him.'

‘Him?’

‘The boss. Mr David.'

‘You deserve to be reported,' said Paddy, still sternly. ‘However, if he’s as bad as that, then no, I won’t. I’ll deal with you myself.’

‘He’s not bad, he’s a decent bloke, and that’s why I don’t want him to know. I’m sorry I came, but it had to be me—the others said so.’

‘Yes, they do that to the youngest, so you must learn ... what’s your name?’

‘Paul.’

‘You must learn, Paul, to stand up for yourself.'

‘But when I do, even if I stretch, I’m not as tall as they are.'

‘Not to worry,' she assured him, ‘you’ll catch up.'

‘I won’t, though, I’m the second eldest but still the smallest. I used to mind once, but I like it now, because I’ll be the jockey, you see.’

‘Yes, I see,’ said Paddy drily. ‘And what about the rest?’

‘Strappers, stablehands, all with a view to being the trainer, but I won’t have to worry about that.’ Paul smiled triumphantly, and it was such a wide smile for a small person that Paddy dropped the lecture she had decided would be appropriate, a lecture driving home to Paul that there should be more to life than racing. Anyway, what would have been the use? Obviously the boy was horse-besotted, obviously ... remembering the saddle in the recreation room last night... they all were.

‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’m not telling, but you’ll have to tell me why you’re here.’

‘We were anxious to find out what you were like.’

‘Fat? Thin? Tall? Short? Dark? Fair? Old? Young?’

‘No,’ said Paul. ‘What you were
like.’

Paddy understood. She had seen too many quick, eager, intuitive child looks
not
to understand.

‘Well?’ she asked.

‘I reckon you’re all right.’

'Thank you, Paul. If you go back to your quarters now I’ll join you very soon. Did you have breakfast out at the stables?’

‘Yes, but Mr David doesn’t bar you from having two, and it’s pretty good grub. You’ll see.’

‘Who cooks it?’ she asked.

‘Mrs Dermott. She wants to see you, too.’

‘But I don’t think she was in this plank stunt.’

‘No, she hadn’t arrived. She has now, I can smell toast.’ Paddy could, too, and she turned to shower and dress. ‘What will I tell them your name is?’ Paul asked. Paddy hesitated. In her day sessions she had been Aunt, but the children had been young children. Paddy, she toyed. No, not quite.

‘Miss Paddy,’ she told Paul. Well, she could scarcely say ‘Miss Padua’.

‘Out! ’ she ordered, and unlocked the intervening door, put Paul on the other side, then quickly bathed and got into her clothes.

The boys were round the table when she went in, but, well trained earlier by Closer Families, or perhaps more recently by Mr David, they all got up.

‘Good morning, boys.’

‘Good morning, Miss Paddy.’

The housekeeper, who had been stacking tins in a walk-in pantry, came out and beamed at Paddy.

‘I’m Mrs Dermott, my dear. It’s good to have a woman around the place. I do the cleaning and cooking ... did Mr David tell you? ... you look after the boys. Boys, exchange names.’

‘She’s Paddy. She said so.’

‘Miss Paddy,’ corrected Paddy. She looked at the tallest and obviously eldest boy. ‘You would be ?’

‘Richard. He’s Mark. That’s John. And you’ve just met Paul.’

‘Paul, the future jockey.’

‘So he hopes.’

‘And who hopes to be trainer?’

This started a babble, it seemed they all wanted to be a trainer, or stud manager, or something equally exalted.

‘But,’ said senior Richard, ‘you have to start at the bottom. Sweeping and cleaning and feeding and all that.’

‘Yes, all that,’ they cheerfully accepted.

... Oh, yes, Mr David, Paddy said silently, your future supply of hands
is
assured. She sat down at the table and Mrs Dermott brought a huge plate.

‘I can’t eat all that! ’ protested Paddy.

‘You have to,’ she was assured on all sides.

About to correct them, tell them that they might have to but that she didn’t, Paddy found the smell of the bacon quite irresistible, and fell to with an appetite that surprised her.

Mrs Dermott meanwhile was busy packing lunches.

These two are for the two youngest,' she informed Paddy, ‘they go to the valley school. Mark, John, you better get down to the gate to catch the school bus.’

‘And what about you two?’ Paddy asked the senior boys. ‘You can’t be finished with school at your age.’

‘We study at night, and Mr David said you’ll be helping us there.’

‘I will, but ’

There’s no secondary classes in the valley school, and anyway, Mr David got permission to let us work in the stud because that’s what we want.’

‘And what he wants, no doubt.’ But Paddy kept that to herself.

The older boys were rushing ahead with their meals the same as the younger, then also receiving a packed lunch.

‘We’re going out on an exercise with Mr David today,’ they explained. ‘If we’re spending the time at the stables, we get grub there.’

‘Yes,’ said Paddy a little faintly, wondering when she would see them again, wondering why she was needed here. But before she could do any asking, they had taken up their lunches and left with a cheery Hooroo.

‘Bright bunch, aren’t they?’ smiled Mrs Dermott. ‘It’s because they’re so happy. They’re square pegs in square holes ... is that right
? ...
but then it’s a boys’ world here.’

‘But one boy didn’t make it.’ Rightly or wrongly, and Paddy knew it was wrongly, Paddy was going to probe, probe Mrs Dermott.

‘Yes, him, poor dear lad,’ Mrs Dermott nodded.

‘Yes ... Jerry.’

‘Did you know him, then, Miss Paddy?'

‘Just Paddy. Yes, a little.’

‘It was terribly sad, but then, of course, it was expected.’

‘So I’ve been told.’

‘Mr David had given up all his life to him, and I really believed he might have gone under when at last it happened. But no, he did the right thing, he filled the house with young men, the young men that poor Jeremy was never to join.’ Mrs Dermott wiped away a tear.

Very sad, agreed Paddy to herself, only it was not the entire reason. I was.

‘Mr David,’ she observed aloud, ‘was very fortunate to get four boys who shared his interests.’

‘But my dear, once you see the stud you’ll know it would be impossible not to be interested. I even think Mr David was hoping for a banana grower among them instead, he has a plantation down the mountains, but so far it’s all horses.’

‘Yes, adolescent boys ... also girls ... are like that,' Paddy agreed.

‘But no girls here. A strictly male staff.’

‘Yes, I would imagine Mr David would insist on that.’

‘Likely he would, but it was the same with Kip Norris. Kip was Mr David’s trainer—very skilled, got wonderful results.’

‘He left?’ inquired Paddy.

‘Yes.’

‘And he, too, was a woman-hater?’

‘Oh, heavens, no! ’ Mrs Dermott laughed. ‘You ask the valley girls. No, I think it was that Kip had to do everything himself, he would never—what’s the word?’

‘Delegate?’

‘Yes. He refused to put anyone on, but as soon as he got out Mr David rectified that.’

‘With four wards.’ Paddy’s voice was cold.

‘Oh, no, he put others on as well.’

‘With as much success as this Kip Norris?’

‘It remains to be seen. Kip Norris was a wizard with horses, no doubt about that. It will be interesting to see how things go now.’

‘At Yoothamurra?’

‘Well, actually I was thinking of Standen Stud, the only comparable plateau property. That’s where Kip went.’

‘More wages, I expect,’ Paddy commented.

‘I admit I wondered about that, too. But I can’t imagine Mr David letting someone go just for the sake of more money. However’ ... a shrug ... ‘Kip still went. Now if you don’t mind, dear, I’ll go, too. I only need to do the unit twice a week, Mr David has his own man who does his side, and I bring the boys’ food in of a morning all ready to be heated up at night.’

‘That’s unnecessary now,’ Paddy assured her. ‘I can take over.’

‘You’ll be taking the boys over, something you know more about than I do, for we had no boys, only the one girl, and she’s married and left now.’