Page 83 - An Australian Lassie

But before she could satisfactorily arrange her question a great heaviness settled down upon her, and her head
nodded and her eyes blinked and blinked and fell too. And all thought of money-making and street-singing,
and John Brown slipped away and left her in a merry land of dreams playing with Cyril and Nancy in the old
home garden.

"Poor little mite," said the man, and he slipped his roughly clad arm around her and drew her towards him so
that her head might rest on his coat. "Poor little mite! She'd find the world but a rough place, T'm thinking!"

And they sped onwards into the hill country where Betty's home was, and John's, and the little school-house
and the white church and the wonderful corner shop. Only they stopped before they came to Betty's home,
stopped at the great iron gates of her grandfather's dwelling, drove through them and up the dark gum tree
shaded path.

The man, carrying the sleeping child in his arms, walked straight into the hall, to the huge astonishment of the
sober man-servant who had opened the door.

"T'll wait here for yer master," he said.

The hall was wide and square, and contained besides three deck-chairs, a cane lounge covered with cushions.

Perhaps the man had some eye for dramatic effect, perhaps it was only accident, but he placed Betty carefully
upon the cushions, and put a crimson-covered one under her dark curly head. Then he withdrew to the door.

Tt was not likely that, having worked hard for his reward, he was about to forego it. But he told himself that
"his room would be better than his company" while the rejoicings over her recovery were going on.

The captain came through the door slowly. One hour ago a policeman had arrived in a cab with John--and had
departed with a substantial reward in his pocket. During the last hour the captain had heard John's
story--thrashed him with his own hands, and sent him to bed.

Now he was "wanted in the hall by a man with a little girl."

But there was no man visible in the hall, only a little barefooted girl asleep--fast asleep upon his lounge. He
could hear her breathing, see her face, and he knew in a moment who she was.

He looked sharply at her, back to the door which was closed, forward to the front door which was drawn to,
and around the empty hall.

Then slowly and as if fearful of being caught he went nearer to the sofa, and looked down at this little
creature--blood of his blood--who had appeared before him again. Her lashes lay still on her rosy sun-tanned
cheeks, her curly hair was in confusion upon the red cushion, her bare feet were upon another. Such a pretty
tired child she looked although she was but a tattered and soiled representative of the small pink-bonneted
maiden he had seen only the other day.

He knew the story of her "career" now, and of her desire to be a self-made woman. John had told him about
her in speaking of his own ambition. The captain's slow mind went back to the time when his own "career"
had been forced upon him, when he had only too often "slept out." And as remembrance after remembrance
awoke, his heart warmed strangely to this brown-haired girl who seemed to be always stumbling into his
pathway.

Dirty, ragged imp as she was, that strange inexplicable sense of kinship stirred within him. Stirred as it had
never stirred towards alien John, who was after all only the son of his first love's son, with no blood of his at