For the next couple of weeks, affairs at Kuryong flowed on in usual
station style. A saddle-horse was brought in for Miss Grant, and
out of her numerous boxes that young lady produced a Bond Street
outfit that fairly silenced criticism. She rode well too, having
been taught in England, and she, Poss, Binjie and Hugh had some great
scampers after kangaroos, half-wild horses, or anything else that
would get up and run in front of them. She was always so fresh,
cheerful, and ready for any excitement that the two boys became
infatuated in four days, and had to be hunted home on the fifth, or
they would have both proposed. Some days she spent at the homestead
housekeeping, cooking, and giving out rations to swagmen--the
wild, half-crazed travellers who came in at sundown for the dole
of flour, tea and sugar, which was theirs by bush custom. Some days
she spent with the children, and with them learnt a lot of bush
life. It being holiday-time, they practically ran wild all over
the place, spending whole days in long tramps to remote parts in
pursuit of game. They had no "play," as that term is known to English
children. They didn't play at being hunters. They were hunters in
real earnest, and their habits and customs had come to resemble
very closely those of savage tribes that live by the chase.
With them Mary had numberless new experiences. She got accustomed
to seeing the boys climb big trees by cutting steps in the bark
with a tomahawk, going out on the most giddy heights after birds'
nests, or dragging the opossum from his sleeping-place in a hollow
limb. She learned to hold a frenzied fox-terrier at the mouth of
a hollow log, ready to pounce on the kangaroo-rat which had taken
refuge there, and which flashed out as if shot from a catapult on
being poked from the other end with a long stick. She learned to
mark the hiding-place of the young wild-ducks that scuttled and
dived, and hid themselves with such super-natural cunning in the
reedy pools. She saw the native companions, those great, solemn,
grey birds, go through their fantastic and intricate dances, forming
squares, pirouetting, advancing, and retreating with the solemnity
of professional dancing-masters. She lay on the river-bank with
the children, gun in hand, breathless with excitement, waiting for
the rising of the duck-billed platypus--that quaint combination of
fish, flesh and fowl--as he dived in the quiet waters, a train of
small bubbles marking his track. She fished in deep pools for the
great, sleepy, hundred-pound cod-fish that sucked down bait and hook,
holus-bolus, and then were hauled in with hardly any resistance,
and lived for days contentedly, tethered to the bank by a line
through their gills.
In these amusements time passed pleasantly enough, and by the time
school-work was resumed Mary Grant had become one of the family.