Joe Wilson and His Mates [83]
But see how happy little Maggie looks! You can see my arm
where I was holding her in the chair. She was six months old then,
and little Wally had just turned two.'
She put the portraits up on the mantel-shelf.
`Let me see; Wally (that's little Walter, you know) --
Wally was five and little Maggie three and a half when we lost them.
Weren't they, Walter?'
`Yes, Maggie,' said the Boss.
`You were away, Walter, when it happened.'
`Yes, Maggie,' said the Boss -- cheerfully, it seemed to me -- `I was away.'
`And we couldn't find you, Walter. You see,' she said to me,
`Walter -- Mr Head -- was away in Sydney on business, and we couldn't find
his address. It was a beautiful morning, though rather warm,
and just after the break-up of the drought. The grass was knee-high
all over the run. It was a lonely place; there wasn't much bush cleared
round the homestead, just a hundred yards or so, and the great awful scrubs
ran back from the edges of the clearing all round for miles and miles --
fifty or a hundred miles in some directions without a break;
didn't they, Walter?'
`Yes, Maggie.'
`I was alone at the house except for Mary, a half-caste girl we had,
who used to help me with the housework and the children.
Andy was out on the run with the men, mustering sheep; weren't you, Andy?'
`Yes, Mrs Head.'
`I used to watch the children close as they got to run about,
because if they once got into the edge of the scrub they'd be lost;
but this morning little Wally begged hard to be let take his little sister
down under a clump of blue-gums in a corner of the home paddock
to gather buttercups. You remember that clump of gums, Walter?'
`I remember, Maggie.'
`"I won't go through the fence a step, mumma," little Wally said.
I could see Old Peter -- an old shepherd and station-hand we had --
I could see him working on a dam we were making across a creek
that ran down there. You remember Old Peter, Walter?'
`Of course I do, Maggie.'
`I knew that Old Peter would keep an eye to the children;
so I told little Wally to keep tight hold of his sister's hand
and go straight down to Old Peter and tell him I sent them.'
She was leaning forward with her hands clasping her knee,
and telling me all this with a strange sort of eagerness.
`The little ones toddled off hand in hand, with their other hands holding fast
their straw hats. "In case a bad wind blowed," as little Maggie said.
I saw them stoop under the first fence, and that was the last
that any one saw of them.'
`Except the fairies, Maggie,' said the Boss quickly.
`Of course, Walter, except the fairies.'
She pressed her fingers to her temples again for a minute.
`It seems that Old Peter was going to ride out to the musterers' camp
that morning with bread for the men, and he left his work at the dam
and started into the Bush after his horse just as I turned back
into the house, and before the children got near him. They either
followed him for some distance or wandered into the Bush
after flowers or butterflies ----' She broke off, and then suddenly asked me,
`Do you think the Bush Fairies would entice children away, Mr Ellis?'
The Boss caught my eye, and frowned and shook his head slightly.
`No. I'm sure they wouldn't, Mrs Head,' I said -- `at least
not from what I know of them.'
She thought, or tried to think, again for a while, in her helpless
puzzled way. Then she went on, speaking rapidly, and rather mechanically,
it seemed to me --
`The first I knew of it was when Peter came to the house
about an hour afterwards, leading his horse, and without the children.
I said -- I said, "O my God! where's the children?"' Her fingers
fluttered up to her temples.
`Don't mind about that, Maggie,' said the Boss, hurriedly, stroking her head.
`Tell Jack about the fairies.'
`You were away at the time, Walter?'
`Yes, Maggie.'
`And we couldn't find you, Walter?'
`No, Maggie,' very gently. He rested his elbow on his knee and his chin
on his hand, and looked into the fire.