A Great Shock
There was a whirling confusion in
the mind of Nealie as she crossed the threshold and
stood in the little room which was her father’s
home.
What a poor little place it was!
There were only two rooms, the one upon which the
door opened, and which was evidently dining-room, kitchen,
and surgery rolled into one, and beyond this there
was a bedroom, very bare and poor, with an iron bedstead,
on which was a mattress and some dark rugs, but no
sheets.
Coming straight as she did from the
almost palatial comfort of the great liner and the
luxury of the Sydney hotel, this poor hut struck a
real note of dismay in the heart of Nealie, for the
place was as poor as the poorest cottage that she
had ever seen at Beechleigh or Bodstead in England.
But it was her father’s home,
and perhaps he had lived in such poverty in order
that he might have more money to send for the support
of his big family in England, and at the thought of
this her heart grew wondrously soft and pitiful, for
she had no idea how very small was the amount that
her father had ever contributed to the support of his
family since disaster had fallen upon him.
While she stood looking round, her
heart growing more and more pitiful for the father
whom she had come so far to see, Sylvia came bustling
into the house and took her by the arm, giving it a
gentle shake.
“Dreaming, are you, dear?
Come and help me lift Rupert out of the wagon, and
let us get him to bed as quickly as we can, for I am
afraid that he is dreadfully ill. Where are the
bedrooms? Oh, what a dreadfully poky little house
it is!” and Miss Sylvia turned up the tip of
her nose in disdainful fashion.
“Sylvia, there is only one bedroom,
with one small bed in it, without sheets. Where
can we put poor Rupert?”
“On that bed, of course; and
if there are no sheets, we have some among our luggage,
for remember we brought the best of Aunt Judith’s
house linen with us, and I know where it was packed.
Come along, Nealie, and let us hustle things a bit,
and then we will have Rupert quite comfortable by
the time Father comes home. That dirty woman who
unlocked the door says she thinks he must have gone
out Pig Hill way, wherever that may be.”
There was no withstanding Sylvia when
her mood was like this, and Nealie knew only too well
that Rupert must be attended to without delay, so she
followed her sister back to the wagon, where Rumple,
Don, and Billykins were already hard at work unpacking
the baggage which had been loaded on to the rack at
the back of the wagon; and when this was all cleared
away they let the backboard down. Then, while
Nealie and Sylvia stood on the ground, Rumple and
Don managed to lift Rupert into their arms, and with
much difficulty they contrived to carry him through
the garden patch into the house.
He had left off shouting and talking
now, and seemed almost in a state of collapse, a condition
that frightened Nealie far more than his delirium
had done. There was no time just at first to look
in the baggage for the sheets which had belonged to
Aunt Judith, so they straightened the rugs on the
hard mattress, and laid their brother down.
“It is a beautifully clean bed
anyhow, and on the whole I think that clean rugs are
better than fusty sheets; but of course a doctor would
have his things clean,” remarked Sylvia, as she
patted the pillow into a more shapely lump and laid
it under the head of poor Rupert.
“I am going to make a fire,
and warm him a little milk; perhaps he will like it
better if it is warm, and he has only had cold things
all day,” said Nealie, and then resolutely turned
her back on the four juniors, who were so hard at
work unpacking the wagon and bringing the boxes, bundles,
and cases into the house.
Rockefeller had been unharnessed and
turned into the doctor’s paddock, which stretched
away from the back of the house up to a line of hills
thickly wooded. The horse was rolling with all
four legs in the air, uttering equine squeals of delight,
as if rejoicing in the fact of the long journey being
safely accomplished. Ducky, tired of helping to
unload, had perched herself on the top bar of the gate,
clapping her hands in delight at the performances
of the horse, which she imagined were being enacted
solely for her benefit, and she grumbled quite vigorously
when Billykins ran out to tell her that supper was
ready and she must come in.
“We have supper every night,
but it isn’t every night that Rocky will cut
capers like that,” she said, with a swing of
her plump little arm in the direction of the horse,
but upset her balance in the process, and tumbled
into the arms of Billykins, who proved unequal to the
strain of her sudden descent, and so they rolled over
in the dust together.
“I think that you are most astonishingly
clumsy,” said the small maiden, scrambling up
with an offended air, and not even saying “Thank
you” to Billykins for having been bottom dog
for the moment.
“When you want to fall off gates
on to people you should choose big, fat people, and
then perhaps they wouldn’t give way as I did;
but you really are fearfully heavy,” answered
Billykins, who was shaking the dust from himself as
a dog shakes off the water when he comes out of a pond.
Then they took hold of each other’s
hands and ran back to the house, where Rumple and
Don had got supper ready in the outer room, while
Nealie and Sylvia were busy with Rupert in the bedroom.
The luggage had all been stowed away
in as shipshape a style as possible, the wagon had
been drawn in at the paddock gate, and now the place
was crammed full with the big family, who were all,
with the exception of Rupert, strung up to the highest
pitch of excitement, waiting for their father’s
return.
But, having had no proper meal since
breakfast, they simply could not wait until he came
before having their supper.
Yet, despite the fact that the long
journey was safely over, and they had reached their
father’s house, it was not a cheerful meal.
Rupert’s condition forbade any laughter or joking;
besides, Nealie and Rumple looked so fearfully nervous
that it was quite impossible to be even as lively
as usual.
Rumple’s trouble was simply
and solely because of that letter which he had forgotten
to post, and that had led to there being no welcome
for them when they arrived. Of course it was
surprising that Mr. Runciman had not written again;
but then everyone knew that Mr. Runciman never wrote
a letter when he could possibly shirk the task, and
that was why they had been so urgent in their entreaties
that he should write the letter while they waited
on that momentous occasion when they went to see him
to ask him to send them out to the land of the Southern
Cross.
“If Father is cross because
he did not know that we were coming I shall just stand
up and say that it was all my fault, and that the others
were not to blame at all,” said Rumple to himself,
and then he mentally rehearsed the little scene and
the speech he would make until he forgot all about
his supper, and just sat by the table staring out through
the door, which had been left wide open for the sake
of coolness, and the strained look on his face made
Nealie’s heart ache.
On her own part she was a prey to
acute anxiety, and she was dreading most of all the
first look which would show on the face of her father
when he knew that his family had come to him.
If the look were pleasure, then everything would be
possible, and nothing else would matter; but if there
were dismay or regret in his expression, she felt that
she would never be able to bear her life again.
Sylvia had no such fears; her nature was so different
from Nealie’s, and she rarely troubled about
things which were under the surface, and so was spared
many worries and much heartache; while Don, Billykins,
and Ducky were only tired of the long waiting until
their father should come, and they were already beginning
to yawn widely because they were so sleepy.
“Where shall we all sleep to-night,
Sylvia?” demanded Ducky presently, breaking
in upon quite a lengthy silence, and voicing the very
question which was so sorely troubling Nealie at that
moment, although she rose from the table and passed
into the other room, where Rupert lay, and pretended
that she had not heard the query.
“Oh, we shall manage somehow,
and there is always the wagon, you know, if everything
else fails!” said Sylvia vaguely; and then she
sprang to her feet with a sudden eager movement, for
to her strained listening there had come the sound
of a horse’s feet on the road, a smart trot
which slackened down by the gate outside, not as if
the animal had been pulled up, but had stopped of
its own accord.
“It is Father!” she said
in a whisper, just as if the power of audible speech
had left her, and then she started for the door, followed
by Ducky and the three boys; but Nealie, busy with
Rupert, had heard no sound of arrival as yet.
They had lighted a lamp when the sun
went down, and now Sylvia stood on the threshold,
with the four younger ones crowding about her, and
the strong light showing the group up in outline,
although it left the faces indistinct.
The horseman had stopped and dismounted;
then, leaving his horse standing where it was, he
came striding along the path towards the group at
the door.
Sylvia tried to speak, but the words
would not come, as she stood with one hand tightly
pressed against her wildly beating heart. And
then, as the man halted in front of her, she saw that
it was quite a young man, and not her father at all.
“It is only someone come for
the doctor. How disappointing!” was her
unspoken comment, and she was just going to tell him
that the doctor had not come home yet, when to her
amazement he asked a question in a surprised tone.
“May I ask why are you here?”
“We are waiting for Father,
but he has not come yet. The woman in the next
house told us that she thought he had gone out Pig
Hill way, and that he would not be long before he
was back. I hope that your business with him
is not urgent?” Her voice quavered slightly in
spite of her efforts to keep it steady, for surely
it would be dreadful if her father were called away
to another case when Rupert was so badly in need of
care.
“Pardon me, but I do not seem
to understand,” said the man, with so much bewilderment
in his manner that Sylvia longed to laugh, but managed
to pull herself together and to maintain a decent
gravity of expression.
“We are expecting Father, that
is Dr. Plumstead, home every minute, and when he comes
he will find a very great surprise in store for him,”
she said, flinging up her head with a happy gesture,
and now her laugh would have its way and rang out
on the hot air, being promptly echoed by the younger
ones, who stood pressed close to her on both sides.
“But I am Dr. Plumstead, and
I have just returned from a case at Pig Hill,”
said the man.
It was at this moment that Nealie
came hurrying to the door, and, sweeping the others
to the right and left to make way for her, stood in
front of the man, her face white as the handkerchief
she held in her hand, while her breath came in troubled
gasps as if she had been running until she was spent.
“Whom did you say that you were?”
she demanded, her voice having a sharp, dictatorial
ring.
The stranger, who had merely lifted
his hat when he spoke to Sylvia, swept it off his
head and held it in his hand when Nealie thrust herself
to the front.
“I am Dr. Plumstead, and this
is my house,” he answered. “But
Nealie, however, cut into the explanation
he was trying to make, and now her bewilderment was
as great as his had been at the first.
“But Dr. Plumstead is our father,
and we have come from England to live with him,”
she cried, and then stood staring at the man with
ever-growing dismay.