The Call of the Pines by Walker Lucy

Author:Walker, Lucy [Walker, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: australian author, small town and rural, outback romance, australian rural novels, australian romance, clean romance, clean and wholesome, autstralian rural romance
Publisher: Wyndham Books (Small Town & Rural Romance)
Published: 2019-05-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Light came creeping through the great trees and the vast tangle of undergrowth, like a beautiful wraith. The scents of the bush; of leaves and trees and creepers assailed them with a magic charm.

No, Cherry had to forget her own small vanities. What did it matter that he had never taken much notice of her; that she had been no more than a slightly prissy girl standing the first test of being interviewed for a job; and then passing through the second phase of his acquaintance with her, a mere travelling appendage being taken home to his station to help his sister-in-law bring up her children? What did it matter that on the station she had been a quiet nobody in the kitchen and around the verandas, looking after small Peter when she should have been drilling bigger Sandra in the skills of reading, writing and arithmetic?

‘See yourself as others see you,’ she had had to say to herself. ‘Then I was nobody but now I’m somebody because I’m stranded in the middle of the bush with him. We, we just can’t help being something to one another, can we?’

‘Because he’s a man he’s got to look after me and Peter. Because I’m a girl I’ve got to be looked after, and I’ve got to follow where I’m led. Meantime it’s a lovely morning and in no time now I’ll have a bath. And so will Peter.’

‘You seem happy this morning,’ Stephen remarked.

Cherry smiled up at him.

‘Perhaps it’s the way you cook duck,’ she replied.

For a moment he looked surprised, not at her words but at her bright elusive smile.

‘Let’s go and shoot some more,’ he said agreeably. ‘We’ll cook it in the coals for lunch too.’

He had the gun under his arm and now he picked up the bags in one of which he had already packed such utensils as he thought they might need on their new excursion. He broke through the screen of bushes, held the bushes back with the butt of the gun so that Cherry, carrying Peter, could pass through, and five minutes later they were well on their way down the trail that led to the lake.

They had covered half the distance when Stephen called a halt under the ancient cabbage tree beyond which Cherry had not been able to find the trail yesterday.

‘Five minutes’ rest, and change burdens,’ said Stephen.

Peter had been kicking and wriggling for the last ten minutes. Cherry felt that he at least needed a change so she gladly agreed.

Stephen had to help free Peter’s chubby legs from the carrying-bag before she could set him on the ground. Again she had that pleasant feeling of them both, herself and Stephen, being in closer companionship. The going had been hard and as they had had to go in single file they had hardly spoken since they left the camp.

Peter, on the ground, hooted with delight at this new environment. He immediately began to scrabble around where he was sitting for new wonders with which to play; a broken stick and several tree nuts.

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