Loving Daughters by Olga Masters

Author:Olga Masters
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Published: 2014-08-07T04:00:00+00:00

30

He might well leave the church. He would make a new attempt to see the archdeacon and tell him he could no longer bear the confines of his appointment to Wyndham. He was in the prime of life, he wanted marriage, he would not spend the next eighteen months celibate! He would find other work. He tried to see himself in an occupation of which Enid would approve. Una would not mind anything. But for Enid he would need to be a teacher, a bookkeeper, or a farmer although he could scarcely manage any of these.

The sulky bowled along the road towards Wyndham, dust flying around his horse’s feet, the harness on the brown back tapping it gently, now and again a shake and a snort, a dipping of the head as if to say, this is more like it, be a sensible fellow and go home and forget all that nonsense.

Just ahead of him the Grubb children lined the road, let out of the little school a half mile down one of the turn-offs, their classmates taking other tracks into the hills where there were three or four other farms.

The heart of Edwards softened at the sight of them, particularly the little girl he had nursed in the house during his first visit. There she was yards behind the others with the neck of her dress undone at the back, appearing too big for her, perhaps one handed down from an older sister. The hem brushed her naked calves and he saw her little feet were bare. Edwards thought of the road scraped with frost of a morning.

He pulled the horse up alongside her. She turned her face and there it was as he remembered it, under thick brown hair like Una’s, remembering their intimacy with a sly, shy twinkle in eyes as brown as Una’s were.

‘Come up,’ he said, and she was on the sulky stirrup in a moment and the others, an older girl and two big boys came together in a little bunch, one of the boys embarrassed at the memory of delivering his father’s message to the house and hastening Edwards’s departure.

‘Climb in, all of you,’ Edwards said, and they did, the guilty one keeping his eyes down and feeling obliged to take the worst place in the sulky, on the floor among feet, huddled there with a face pressed to scarred knees.

The sulky shafts tipped, and the horse’s back broadened as both adjusted to the load, and after a few strained steps the horse settled into a trot, and the swaying sulky sent the little brown-haired one close against Edwards’s arms, where she remained gripped to his flesh to avoid slipping down the sloping seat on top of her brother. The warm little kitten of a thing! He did not want to shake the reins in case his arm disturbed her, the chill of separation more than he could bear.

She pressed her chin into his shoulder to whisper: ‘Where is your baby today?’

The others heard and expected to be tipped from the sulky there and then.

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