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‘But what am I to do ?’ Paddy protested.

‘I guess you’ll fill in a week just looking around. Then after that there’s the plantation, though you’ll have to be taken there.’

‘But do?’ persisted Paddy. ‘Do, not see?’

Mrs Dermott smiled.

‘You ask the boys,’ she shrugged. ‘Also ’

‘Yes?’

'You visit the stud.’ Now her smile stretched all the way. She picked up her things, looked around to see if anything was left undone, then went out.

She might, thought Paddy, have left the washing up at least, but that was now sitting in a throbbing dishwasher. The house had every convenience. Paddy went to the big fridge and saw that it was stacked with pre-cooked dishes ready to be heated and served. Leaving, she shrugged, only her own bed to be closed up, for she was that kind of sleeper once she got off, and she had got off very quickly last night.

Well, seeing there was nothing else, she would do the closing up, then take a walk.

She strolled out of the back door a few minutes later to a large, immaculate lawn filled with tended plots of flowers and shrubs. She had not expected this, she had sensed a formal garden when they had pulled up last night at the front of the house, but she had thought that the rear would have been bare, probably cemented, strictly utilitarian as suited a stud. But there was no sign of any of the things that must go with a stud ... unless it was that string of outbuildings set well past a thick stand of native trees further to the rear.

She decided not to discover that yet, but to look around generally, and her first scrutiny was of the house itself. She walked along a stone path to the front.

It was indeed the castle she had said, and she could see her ‘wing’ dovetailed between Magnus David’s side and the wards’. It was not a two-storeyed edifice, but it appeared so because of the basement that was taken over by garages. Paddy supposed that in the old days the carriages and sulkies had been deposited there.

She had reached the drive where he had halted last night, then announced: ‘Madam, we’ve arrived.’ It had been after he had answered her query as to why he obviously despised her so much with a tight:

‘Because I loved him.’

Well, she understood all that now, but it did not make her feel any more warm towards him because of her understanding. She turned quickly, hoping he did not suddenly open the front door and descend the steps. Almost running in her agitation, she left the drive and chose a track to the right.

It proved heart-warmingly beautiful. There were no mountains to look at, for here was
on
the mountains, but there were rolling pastures as far as Paddy could see, and the grass, according to its age, ran a dazzling gamut of colour from emerald green to cigar and gold. The trees were in controlled thickets, mainly eucalypt, with the eucalypts’ inimitable art of throwing lace patterns on the ground beneath.

A lot of the loveliness was in the air, apple-crisp, but with a hint of banana sweetness, for once over the plateau, Paddy knew now, the plantations opened up.

She crossed to a fence and climbed up to sit on it. As far as she could tell there was no one in whatever the fence was supposed to enclose, neither horse, nor livestock of any sort, nor gardener, stablehand, strapper. Then:

‘Hi! ’ said a voice.

Paddy nearly fell off the fence in her surprise. She had looked around only a moment ago and seen nothing. Now there was a man, tall, blue-eyed, and somehow shining like the day was shining. He smiled at Paddy and said ‘Hi’ again.

‘American?’ Paddy smiled back of the ‘Hi’, for he was one of those people you had to smile at. ‘Canadian?’

‘Australian, but I’ve just returned from the States after selling one of our boys.’

‘Boys?’ she queried.

‘Horses. Everything is horses here. I’m Kip Norris.’ He extended a hand.

‘Padua Travis, but don’t let it frighten you, I’m usually called Paddy.’

‘I like Padua. Welcome, Padua.’

‘Thank you,’ Paddy said. She said it warmly. It was the first glad-to-have-you gesture she had received. The boys, she had to admit, had not objected, but on the other hand they had not enthused, and as for Magnus David

‘But I’m puzzled,’ Kip Norris was saying, ‘as to where you sprang from.’

‘Yoothamurra. I’ ... a pause ... ‘believe you know it.’

‘Oh, yes, I know it,’ he smiled. He had climbed to the top rail beside her. ‘Don’t tell me the great Magnus has taken on a girl strapper.’

‘I was told by Mrs Dermott this morning that it could have been you who would never accept a female.’ She had not been told quite that, Paddy knew, but just for fun she said it.

‘Not under authority,’ Kip Norris agreed, ‘as I was under authority.’

‘Under Mr David’s authority?’

‘Yes.’ Kip Norris shrugged. However, his voice did not sound as resentful as it might have, Paddy thought, and she liked him for it.

‘So you left Yoothamurra?’ she asked.

‘For the usual reason,’ he nodded, ‘that of bettering myself.’

‘And have you?’

‘I thought I had, but now, looking at you, realising what I’ve missed, I don’t know.’

It was a charming compliment charmingly given by a charming man, and Paddy could not help feeling pleased.

The nice part was he didn’t spoil it by following it up. He jumped down from the fence, raised his brows to her, and, when she nodded, put up his arms and lifted her down. He held her a moment longer than was necessary when she reached ground, but it was only a moment, an admiring moment, and she quite enjoyed it. He was
very
nice, she thought.

She would have liked to have found out his real reason for leaving Yoothamurra for an equal stud, for there must be a reason, but she still admired him for not speaking about it.

‘Well, I’d better get back, see if there’s work to do,’ she said.

‘Work ... then you’re not a guest?’

‘I’m an employee.’

‘Then he did take on a girl strapper?’

‘No,’ she explained. ‘I’ve come under a different category. I’m a house-mother. There are now four wards.’

‘Yes, I heard about that.’ He was looking at her with his smiling blue eyes, and once more Paddy smiled back. ‘Lucky wards,’ he envied.

‘You don’t know, I may be a gorgon.’

‘Not with a face like yours, all the flowers of spring.’

‘You do say nice things,’ she protested.

‘And you don’t like them?’ he asked of the protest.

‘I... well, I don’t know whether I should accept them. I don’t know you yet, do I?’

‘I know you.’

She felt she knew him, too, but caution made her bring Magnus David into it.

‘The big boss mightn’t like it,’ she said. She added: ‘I almost called him Big Brother.’

‘He was both once. A pity about Jeremy.’

‘Yes.’

‘You knew him?’

‘Just knew him,' Paddy answered. Well, that was true.

‘That’s the way life goes,' Kip Norris shrugged. ‘I only hope the kid fitted in all he could while he could. That’s what I intend doing. No, Miss All the Flowers of Spring, I agree with you, Big Brother mightn’t like it, so I wouldn’t tell him if I were you.’

‘The name is Padua, and I won’t.'

‘Goodbye, Padua.'

‘Goodbye, Kip.’ A few steps, then Paddy turned impulsively. ‘Will I see you here again?’

‘This is still Yoothamurra, make it further along the track to Standen.’ He pointed to a cluster of buildings beyond some more thickets of eucalypts.

Paddy considered that, thought ‘Why not?’ and agreed.

This time she did go, and as she sauntered back towards the ‘castle’, she was pleasantly aware of his eyes on her, and, because she was a woman, she knew they were admiring eyes, admiring her ... and she liked that, too.

It was only when she came to a bend in the lane that she turned to see if he was still there, but he was gone.

When she turned back again there
was
someone ... Magnus David. He stood quite suddenly in front of her, evidently waiting for her recognition of him, then her attention.

He looked ... characteristically, Paddy thought, feeling she was now knowledgeable about the man ... annoyed.

‘What
in tarnation was attracting you back there?’ Magnus David demanded suspiciously.

‘I thought you were out on exercise—the boys said you were taking them, and Mrs Dermott even packed cut lunches.’ Paddy spoke as shortly as he had, ignoring his question.

‘Were you talking to someone? Did you see someone?’

‘Where are the boys now?’

‘Miss Travis,
I am speaking to you.’

‘And I’m speaking to you. I’m asking about the boys. They are in my care, remember, I’m their house-mother.’

‘And I’m your boss. Answer me at once. With whom were you staging a rendezvous just now?’

Paddy said coldly, ‘A rendezvous is an arranged meeting. Seeing I’ve barely arrived here wouldn’t that be rather hard to achieve so soon?’

‘You are taking obvious pains to evade me, meaning you did meet someone.’

‘No, I did not!’ In her indignation against this impossible man Paddy found the lie quite easy. She added: ‘Satisfied now?’

‘No. That was a very long backward glance.’

Paddy did not know what inspired her to offer: ‘It’s country worthy of a very long backward glance,’ but she succeeded in instantly diverting him. At once his mood changed. He looked where she had been looking ... no sign of Kip Norris ... and his eyes flicked. He loves it, Paddy thought, and no wonder; it’s a very beautiful corner.

‘I did not go out with the boys,’ he offered quite amiably, no doubt mollified by her praise, ‘because I had a last-minute job to attend to. But I sent them along.’

‘Are they capable?’ she asked.

‘Of course, otherwise they wouldn’t have been allowed to go.’

‘Then they could ride before they came here? You chose them because of that?’

‘They could ride a merry-go-round steed, I’d say, but that would be all. No, I taught them.’

‘But surely riding, responsible riding, which I imagine would be all you would go in for ’

‘I certainly would! ’

‘Couldn’t be taught in this short a time.’

‘It can, and it has been, with’ ... a reminiscent grin ... ‘a lot of application.’

‘On both sides?’

‘Of course.’

Paddy asked, ‘What if you’d got a non-rider among them?’

‘It didn’t happen.’

‘But what if it had?’

‘It didn’t happen,’ he continued, ‘not after I took them to the stud.’

‘Oh, that stud!’ Paddy spoke impatiently. Mrs Dermott had said practically the same, she thought, anyone would think it contained some magic.

‘After that, they couldn’t wait to be shown,’ went on Magnus David. A pause. ‘You ride, of course?’

‘No “of course”.’

‘Then we must see to it, mustn’t we?’

‘No, we must not ... I mean, we need not. After all, I’m here in the role of house-mother, not rider.’

‘However,’ he insisted, ‘I wish you to ride since the boys ride.’

For all the angry answers she had for him, Paddy found she could only murmur a plaintive: ‘I’d never learn.’

‘You’d learn as they did, with application on both sides.’ He waited meaningfully. ‘Day after day.’

‘Day after day?’

‘You don’t catch on at one short lesson,’ he told her.

‘Mr David, there is no need for me to ride.’

‘I think there is. You’re here to watch over the wards, and the wards are more in the saddle than not.’

‘Only because you’ve arranged it that way.’

‘What if I have? It’s a good healthy way.’

‘And a good financial way too?’

‘Meaning I’m enjoying cheap labour,’ he nodded calmly. ‘I’ve been waiting for that.’

‘Well, aren’t you?’

‘Perhaps, and I’m not averse to it, but I didn’t plan it.’

‘Only connived at it?’ she said sharply.

‘Look, I simply took the youngsters over Yoothamurra and they were lost from then on.’

‘Even to the extent of a saddle in the recreation room.’ He laughed at that ... and somewhere in the laughter Paddy found she had to join him. It
had
been funny, she recalled.

‘All the same ’ she tried to insert sternly.

‘All the same, you’ll be the same yourself after the tour of inspection I now propose to give you.’

‘Oh, no, I won’t.’

‘Won’t be the same?’

‘No, Mr David, I won’t go on any tour of inspection with you. I’m here to house-mother, not to ’ The last words were broken off in incredulous indignation. The wretched man must have had his horse cropping in the thicket beside the track, for he had pulled on a rein she had not noticed before, mounted, then, before she could realise what was happening had lifted her up after him and propped her in front of him on the tall bay.

‘Giddup, Sunset! ’ he urged.

‘You ’

‘Hold tight, I never believe in going round when I can go over.’ Over a fence they went.

It wasn’t far, for which Paddy was extremely grateful, but the short distance also gave her no time to regain her temper.

‘You’re quite impossible!’ She was on her feet again now and trying vainly to straighten her crumpled dress.

‘That jump ’

‘We would have taken half an hour doing it the formal way,’ he pointed out, ‘because I would have had to let you down each time to open and shut a gate.’

‘That’s for when you’re in cars.’

‘It’s also adopted for horseback if the rider behind the passenger decrees it.’

Decrees! Paddy fumed.

‘Did the tour have to be now?’ she asked tartly. ‘And why couldn’t we have walked?’

‘It had to be now because I’m a busy man, also walking cuts into time.’ He was tethering Sunset. ‘Follow me, please.’ He cut short the fresh argument he must have seen blazing in Paddy’s face.

After a vexed hesitation, Paddy followed.

It was a perfectly maintained stud; Paddy, for all her bias, could see that at once. It comprised several neat rows of buildings, all serving a designed purpose.