Larrie had been carrying it for a long way, and said it was quite time
Dot took her turn.
Dot was arguing the point.
She reminded him of all athletic sports he had taken part in, and of all
the prizes he had won; she asked him what was the use of being
six-foot-two and an impossible number of inches round the chest if he
could not carry a baby.
Larrie gave her an unexpected glance and moved the baby to his other
arm; he was heated and unhappy, there seemed absolutely no end to the
red, red road they were traversing, and Dot, as well as refusing to help
to carry the burden, laughed aggravatingly at him when he said it was
heavy.
"He is exactly twenty-one pounds," she said, "I weighed him on the
kitchen scales yesterday. I should think a man of your size ought to be
able to carry twenty-one pounds without grumbling so."
"But he's on springs, Dot," he said; "just look at him, he's never still
for a minute; you carry him to the beginning of Lee's orchard, and then
I'll take him again."
Dot shook her head.
"I'm very sorry, Larrie," she said, "but I really can't. You know I
didn't want to bring the child, and when you insisted, I said to myself,
you should carry him every inch of the way, just for your obstinacy."
"But you're his mother," objected Larrie.
He was getting seriously angry, his arms ached unutterably, his clothes
were sticking to his back, and twice the baby had poked a little fat
thumb in his eye and made it water.
"But you're its father," Dot said sweetly.
"It's easier for a woman to carry a child than a man"--poor Larrie was
mopping his hot brow with his disengaged hand--"everyone says so; don't
be a little sneak, Dot; my arm's getting awfully cramped; here, for
pity's sake take him."
Dot shook her head again.
"Would you have me break my vow, St. Lawrence?" she said.
She looked provokingly cool and unruffled as she walked along by his
side; her gown was white, with transparent puffy sleeves, her hat was
white and very large, she had little white canvas shoes, long white
Suede gloves, and she carried a white parasol.
"I'm hanged," said Larrie, and he stopped short in the middle of the
road; "look here, my good woman, are you going to take your baby, or are
you not?"
Dot revolved her sunshade round her little sweet face.
"No, my good man," she said; "I don't propose to carry your baby one
step."
"Then I shall drop it," said Larrie. He held it up in a threatening
position by the back of its crumpled coat, but Dot had gone sailing on.
"Find a soft place," she called, looking back over her shoulder once and
seeing him still standing in the road.
"Little minx," he said under his breath.
Then his mouth squared itself; ordinarily it was a pleasant mouth, much
given to laughter and merry words; but when it took that obstinate look,
one could see capabilities for all manner of things.
He looked carefully around. By the roadside there was a patch of soft,
green grass, and a wattle bush, yellow-crowned, beautiful. He laid the
child down in the shade of it, he looked to see there were no ants or
other insects near; he put on the bootee that was hanging by a string
from the little rosy foot, and he stuck the india-rubber comforter in
its mouth. Then he walked quietly away and caught up to Dot.
"Well?" she said, but she looked a little startled at his empty arms;
she drooped the sunshade over the shoulder nearest to him, and gave a
hasty, surreptitious glance backward. Larrie strode along.
"You look fearfully ugly when you screw up your mouth like that," she
said, looking up at his set side face.
"You're an unnatural mother, Dot, that's what you are," he returned
hotly. "By Jove, if I was a woman, I'd be ashamed to act as you do. You
get worse every day you live. I've kept excusing you to myself, and
saying you would get wiser as you grew older, and instead, you seem more
childish every day."
She looked childish. She was very, very small in stature, very slightly
and delicately built. Her hair was in soft gold-brown curls, as short as
a boy's; her eyes were soft, and wide, and tender, and beautiful as a
child's. When she was happy they were the colour of that blue, deep
violet we call the Czar, and when she grew thoughtful, or sorrowful,
they were like the heart of a great, dark purple pansy. She was not
particularly beautiful, only very fresh, and sweet, and lovable. Larrie
once said she always looked like a baby that has been freshly bathed and
dressed, and puffed with sweet violet powder, and sent out into the
world to refresh tired eyes.
That was one of his courtship sayings, more than a year ago, when she
was barely seventeen. She was eighteen now, and he was telling her she
was an unnatural mother.
"Why, the child wouldn't have had its bib on, only I saw to it," he
said, in a voice that increased in excitement as he dwelt on the
enormity.
"Dear me," said Dot, "that was very careless of Peggie; I must really
speak to her about it."
"I shall shake you some day, Dot," Larrie said, "shake you till your
teeth rattle. Sometimes I can hardly keep my hands off you."
His brow was gloomy, his boyish face troubled, vexed.
And Dot laughed. Leaned against the fence skirting the road that seemed
to run to eternity, and laughed outrageously.
Larrie stopped too. His face was very white and square-looking, his dark
eyes held fire. He put his hands on the white, exaggerated shoulders of
her muslin dress and turned her round.
"Go back to the bottom of the hill this instant, and pick up the child
and carry it up here," he said.
"Go and insert your foolish old head in a receptacle for
_pommes-de-terre_," was Dot's flippant retort.
Larrie's hands pressed harder, his chin grew squarer.
"I'm in earnest, Dot, deadly earnest. I order you to fetch the child,
and I intend you to obey me," he gave her a little shake to enforce the
command. "I am your master, and I intend you to know it from this day."
Dot experienced a vague feeling of surprise at the fire in the eyes that
were nearly always clear, and smiling, and loving, then she twisted
herself away.
"Pooh," she said, "you're only a stupid over-grown, passionate boy,
Larrie. You my master! You're nothing in the world but my husband."
"Are you going?" he said in a tone he had never used before to her. "Say
Yes or No, Dot, instantly."
"No," said Dot, stormily.
Then they both gave a sob of terror, their faces blanched, and they
began to run madly down the hill.
Oh the long, long way they had come, the endless stretch of red, red
road that wound back to the gold-tipped wattles, the velvet grass, and
their baby!
Larrie was a fleet, wonderful runner. In the little cottage where they
lived, manifold silver cups and mugs bore witness to it, and he was
running for life now, but Dot nearly outstripped him.
She flew over the ground, hardly touching it, her arms were
outstretched, her lips moving. They fell down together on their knees by
their baby, just as three furious, hard-driven bullocks thundered by,
filling the air with dust and bellowing.
The baby was blinking happily up at a great fat golden beetle that was
making a lazy way up the wattle. It had lost its "comforter" and was
sucking its thumb thoughtfully. It had kicked off its white knitted
boots, and was curling its pink toes up in the sunshine with great
enjoyment.
"Baby!" Larrie said. The big fellow was trembling in every limb.
"_Baby!_" said Dot. She gathered it up in her little shaking arms, she
put her poor white face down upon it, and broke into such pitiful tears
and sobs that it wept too. Larrie took them both into his arms, and sat
down on a fallen tree. He soothed them, he called them a thousand
tender, beautiful names; he took off Dot's hat and stroked her little
curls, he kissed his baby again and again; he kissed his wife. When they
were all quite calm and the bullocks ten miles away, they started again.
"I'll carry him," said Larrie.
"Ah no, let me," Dot said.
"Darling, you're too tired--see, you can hold his hand across my
shoulder."
"No, no, give him to me--my arms ache without him."
"But the hill--my big baby!"
"Oh, I _must_ have him--Larrie, _let_ me--see, he is so light--why, he
is nothing to carry."
_THE OLD GUM._
Stand here; he has once been a grand old gum,
But it makes one reflect that the time will come
When we all shall have had our fling;
Yet, our life soon passes, we scarce know how--
You would hardly think, to see him now,
That once he had been a king.
In his youth, in the silence of the wood,
A forest of saplings around him stood;
But he overtopped them all.
And, over their heads, through the forest shade,
He could see how the sunlight danced and played,
So straight he grew, and so tall.
Each day of his life brought something new,
The breeze stirred the bracken, the dry leaves flew,
The wild bird passed on the wing:
He heard the low, sad song of the wood,
His childhood was passed in its solitude;
And he grew--and became a king.
Oft has he stood on the stormy night,
When the long-forked flash has revealed to sight
The plain where the floods were out;
When the wind came down like a hurricane,
And the branches, broken and snapped in twain,
Were scattered and strewn about.
Oft, touched by the reddening bush-fire glow,
When clouds of smoke, rolling up from below,
Obscured the sun like a pall;
When the forest seemed like a flaming sea,
And down came many a mighty tree,
Has he stood firm through it all.
Those days of his youth have long gone by;
The magpie's note and the parrot's cry,
As borne on the evening wind,
Recall to his thoughts his childhood flown,
Old memories, fresh, yet faintly blown,
Of the youth he has left behind.
On the brow of the hill he stands to-day,
But the pride of his life has passed away;
His leaves are withered and sere.
And oft at night comes a sound of woe,
As he sways his tired limbs to and fro
And laments to the bleak night air.
He can still look down on the plain below,
And his head is decked by the sunset glow
With a glorious crown of light;
And from every field, as the night draws on,
To his spreading arms the magpies come
To shelter there for the night.
Some night, when the waters rage and swell,
He will hear the thunder roll his knell,
And will bow his head to the ground;
And the birds from their nests will wheel in the air,
And the rabbits burrow deeper in fear,
At the thundering, rending sound.
And the magpies must find another home;
No more, at the sunset, will they come
To warble their evening song.
Ah, well! our sorrow is quickly flown,
For the good old friends we have loved and known:
And the old tree falls by the tall new grown,
And the weak must yield to the strong.