When do you begin to teach Bob to run a station?"
"I never saw anyone in such a hurry," said Jim. "Why, the poor beggar
hasn't had his tea yet--give him time."
"But we are in a hurry," said Tommy. "We're burning to learn all about
it. Norah is to teach me the house side, while you instruct Bob how to
tell a merino bullock--is it not?--from an Ayrshire." Everybody ate with
suspicious haste, and she looked at them shrewdly. "Now, I have said
that all wrong, I feel sure, but it's just as well for you to be
prepared for that. Norah will have a busy time correcting my mistakes."
"You aren't supposed to know anything about cattle and things like
that," said Norah. "And when it comes to the house side, I don't think
you'll find I can teach you much--if anyone brought up to know French
cooking and French housekeeping has much to learn from a backblocks
Australian, I'll be surprised."
"In fact," said Mr. Linton, "I should think that the lessons will
generally end in the students of domestic economy fleeing forth upon
horses and studying how to deal with beef--on the hoof. Don't you,
Wally?"
"Rather," said Wally. "And Brownie will wash up after them, and say,
'Bless their hearts, why would they stay in a hot kitchen!' And so poor
old Bob will go down the road to ruin!"
"It's a jolly prospect," said Bob placidly. "I think we'll knock a good
deal of fun out of it!"
They trooped out in a body presently on their preliminary voyage
of discovery; touring the house itself, with its big rooms and wide
corridors, and the broad balconies that ran round three sides, from
which you looked far across the run--miles of rolling plains, dotted
with trees and clumps of timber, and merging into a far line of low,
scrub-grown hills.
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