"Bless you, Norah and dad hadn't tasted b.u.t.ter for nearly three years before they came on board the Nauru," said Jim. "It was affecting to see Nor greeting a pat of b.u.t.ter for the first time!"

"But you had some b.u.t.ter--we read about it."

"Two ounces per head weekly--but they put all their ration into the 'Tired People's food,'" said Wally.

"It wasn't only dad and I," said Norah quickly. "Every soul we employed did that--Irish maids, butler, cook-lady and all. And we hadn't to ask one of them to do it. The Tired People always had b.u.t.ter. They used to think we had a special allowance from Government, but we hadn't."

"Dear me!" said the aunt. "It's too terrible. And meat?"

"Oh, meat was very short," said Norah, laughing. "Of course we were fairly well off for our Tired People, because they had soldiers'

rations; but even so, we almost forgot what a joint looked like. Stews and hot pots and made dishes--you call them that because you make them of anything but meat! We became very clever at camouflaging meat dishes.

Somehow the Tired People ate them all. But"--she paused, laughing--"you know I never thought I could feel greedy for meat. And I did--I just longed, quite often, for a chop!"

"And could you not have one?"

"Gracious, no!" Norah looked amazed. "Chops were quite the most extravagant thing of all--too much bone. You see, the meat ration included bone and fat, and I can tell you we were pretty badly worried if we got too much of either."

"To think of all she knows," said the aunt, regarding her with a tearful eye. Whereat Norah laughed.

"Oh, I could tell you lots of homely things," she said. "How we always boiled bones for soup at least four times before we looked on them as used up; and how we worked up sheep's heads into the most wonderful chicken galantines; and--but would you mind if I ate some walnut cake instead? It's making me tremble even to look at it."

After which Jean Yorke and the russet-brown waitresses vied in plying the new-comers with the most elaborate cakes, until even Jim and Wally begged for mercy.

"You ought to remember we're not used to these things," Wally protested, waving away a strange erection of cream, icing and wafery pastry. "If I ate that it would go to my head, and I'd have to be removed in an ambulance. And the awful part of it is--I want to eat it. Take it out of my sight, Jean, or I'll yield, and the consequences will be awful."

"But it is too dreadful to think of all you poor souls have gone through," said an aunt soulfully. "How little we in Australia know of what war means!"

"But if it comes to that, how little we knew!" Norah exclaimed, "Why, there we were, only a few miles from the fighting--you could hear the guns on a still day, when a big action was going on; and except for the people who came directly in the way of air raids, England knew little or nothing of war: I mean, war as the people of Belgium and Northern France knew it. The worst we had to admit was that we didn't get everything we liked to eat, and that was a joke compared to what we might have had.

Hardly anyone in England went cold or hungry through the war, and so I don't think we knew much about it either." She broke off blushing furiously, to find every one listening to her. "I didn't mean to make a speech."

"It's quite true, though," said her father, "even if you did make a speech about it. There were privations in some cases, no doubt--invalids sometimes suffered, or men used to a heavy meat diet, whose wives had not knowledge--or fuel--enough to cook subst.i.tutes properly. On the other hand, there was no unemployment, and the poor were better fed than they had ever been, since every one could make good wages at munitions.

The death rate among civilians was very much lower than usual. People learned to eat less, and not to waste--and the pre-war waste in England was terrific. And I say--and I think we all say--that anyone who grumbles about 'privations' in England deserves to know what real war means--as the women of Belgium know it."

He stopped, and Norah regarded him with great pride, since his remarks were usually strictly limited to the fewest possible words.

"Well, it's rather refreshing to hear you talk," remarked another squatter. "A good many people have come back telling most pathetic tales of all they had to endure. I suppose, though, that some were worse off than you?"

"Oh, certainly," David Linton said. "We knew one Australian, an officer's wife, who was stranded in a remote corner of South Wales with two servants and two babies; it was just at the time of greatest scarcity before compulsory rationing began, when most of the food coming in was kept in the big towns and the Midlands. That woman could certainly get milk for her youngsters; but for three months the only foods she and her maids were sure of getting were war bread, potatoes, haricot beans and salt herrings. She was a good way from the nearest town, and there was deep snow most of the time. There was no carting out to her place, and by the time she could get into the town most of the food shops would be empty."

"And if you saw the salt herrings!" said Norah. "They come down from Scotland, packed thousands in a barrel. They're about the length and thickness of a comb, and if you soak them for a day in warm water and then boil them, you can begin to think about them as a possible food.

But Mrs. Burton and her maids ate them for three months. She didn't seem to think she had anything to grumble about--in fact, she said she still felt friendly towards potatoes, but she hoped she'd never see a herring or a bean again!"

"She had her own troubles about coal, too," remarked Jim. "The only coal down there is a horrible brownish stuff that falls into damp slack if you look at it; it's generally used only for furnaces, but people had to draw their coal allowance from the nearest supply, and it was all she could get. The only way to use the beastly stuff was to mix it with wet, salt mud from the river into what the country people call culm--then you cut it into blocks, or make b.a.l.l.s of it, and it hardens. She couldn't get a man to do it for her, and she used to mix all her culm herself--and you wouldn't call it woman's work, even in Germany. But she used to tell it as a kind of joke."

"She used to look on herself as one of the really lucky women," said David Linton, "because her husband didn't get killed. And I think she was--herrings and culm and all. And we're even luckier, since we've all come back to Australia, and to such a welcome as you've given us." He stood up, smiling his slow, pleasant smile at them all. "And now I think I've got to go chasing the Customs, if I'm ever to disinter our belongings and get home."

The girls took possession of Norah and Tommy, who left their menfolk to the drear business of clearing luggage, and thankfully spent the afternoon in the Botanical Gardens, glad to have firm ground under their feet after six weeks of sea. Then they all met at dinner at Mrs.

Geoffrey Linton's, where they found her son, Cecil, who greeted Norah with something of embarra.s.sment. There was an old score between Norah and Cecil Linton, although they had not seen each other for years; but its memory died out in Norah's heart as she looked at her cousin's military badge and noted that he dragged one foot slightly. Indeed, there was no room in Norah's heart for anything but happiness.

The aunts and uncles tried hard to persuade David Linton to remain a few days in Melbourne, but he shook his head.

"I've been homesick for five years," he told them. "And it feels like fifty. I'll come down again, I promise--yes, and bring the children, of course. But just now I can't wait. I've got to get home."

"That old Billabong!" said Mrs. Geoffrey, half laughing. "Are you going to live and die in the backblocks, David?"

"Why, certainly--at least I hope so," he said. "I suppose there must be lucid intervals, now that Norah is grown up, or imagines she is--not that she seems to me a bit different from the time when her hair was down. Still I suppose I must bring her to town, and let her make her curtsy at Government House, and do all the correct things--"

Some one slipped a hand through his arm.

"But when we've done them, daddy," said Norah cheerfully, "there will always be Billabong to go home to!"

CHAPTER X

BILLABONG

"Will it be fine, Murty?"

The person addressed made no answer for a moment, continuing to stare at the western horizon with his eyes wrinkled and his face anxious. He turned presently; a tall, grizzled man, with the stooping shoulders and the slightly bowed legs that are the heritage of those who spend nine-tenths of their time in the saddle.

"Sorra a one of me knows," he said. "It's one of thim unchancy days that might be annything. Have ye looked at the gla.s.s?"

"It's mejum," replied the first speaker. She was a vast woman, with a broad, kindly face, lit by shrewd and twinkling blue eyes, dressed, as was her custom, in a starched blue print, with a snowy ap.r.o.n. "Mejum only. But I don't feel comferable at that there bank of clouds, Murty."

"I'd not say meself it was good," admitted Murty O'Toole, head stockman on the Billabong run. He looked again at the doubtful sky, and then back to Mrs. Brown. "Have ye no corns, at all, that 'ud be shootin' on ye if rain was coming?"

"Corns I 'ave, indeed," said Mrs. Brown, with the sigh of one who admits that she is but human. "But no--they ain't shootin' worth speakin'

about, Murty. Nor me rheumatic knee ain't givin' tongue, as Master Jim would say."

"Yerra, that's all to the good," said the stockman, much cheered. "I'll not look at the ould sky anny longer--leastways, not till I have that cup of tea ye were speakin' about."

"Come in then," said Mrs. Brown, leading the way into the kitchen--a huge place so glittering with cleanliness and polish that it almost hurt the eye. "Kettle's boilin'--I'll have it made in a jiffy. No, Murty, you will not sit on that table. Pounds of bath-brick 'ave gone into me tables this last week."

"Ye have them always that white I do not see how ye'd want them to be whiter," remarked Murty, gazing round him. "But I niver see anything to aiqual the shine ye have on them tins an' copper. And the stove is that fine it's a shame to be cookin' with it." He looked with respect at the black satin and silver of the stove, where leaping flames glowed redly.

"Well, I'll always say there isn't a heartsomer place to come into than the Billabong kitchen. And isn't it the little misthress that thinks so?"

"Bless her, she was always in and out of it from the time she could toddle," said Mrs. Brown, pausing with the teapot in her hand. "And she wasn't much more than toddlin' before she was at me to teach her to cook. When she was twelve she could cook a dinner as well as anyone twice her age. I never see the beat of her--handy as a man out on the run, too--"

"She was that," said Murty solemnly. "Since she was a bit of a thing I never see the bullock as could get away from her. And the ponies she'd ride! There was nothin' ever looked through a bridle that cud frighten her."

"Poof! Miss Norah didn't know what it was to be afraid," said Mrs.

Brown, filling the huge brown teapot. "Sometimes I've wished she was, for me heart's been in me mouth often and often when I see her go caperin' down the track on some mad-'eaded pony."

"An' there was niver a time when they was late home but you made sure the whole lot of 'em was killed," said Murty, grinning. "I'd come in here an' find you wit' all the funerals planned, so to speak--"

"Ah, go on! At least, I alwuz stayed at home when I was nervis," said Mrs. Brown. "Who was it I've known catch an 'orse in the dark, an' go off to look for 'em when they were a bit late? Not me, Mr. O'Toole!" She filled his cup and handed it to him with a triumphant air.