Page:Coo-ee - tales of Australian life by Australian ladies.djvu/136

132 be quite happy again,' I said cheerfully. 'Mean-while, you seem happy with your step-brother, who is certainly most devoted to you.'

'Ah, Clive. Yes, we are devoted. My father married his mother, so we are much of an age.' ('Good gracious!' I mentally ejaculated.) 'We have been brought up together, and we are more to each other than many a full brother and sister. When my health drove me off the stage, he came to take care of me. We have bought a little house and place, and live up there among the hills. You will come and see us--lunch with us--with the girls on Monday?' she asked, in a pleading way.

'Certainly; I should like to very much; but isn't it lonely? Don't you both get very tired of it?'

What possible motive could induce this young woman to live up among these hills and these dull woods with a step-brother, and no possibility, so far as one could see, of doing a stroke of mischief? As to the hole in her lung, her outward appearance quite belied the possibility of anything of the kind.

With these thoughts besetting me, I looked at her. She was in the very act of finishing a long and a most remarkable smile at the eldest of the good young people with baggy-kneed trousers. Was I dreaming or bewitched? I rubbed my eyes involuntarily, and looked again; her expression was infantile, and the young man had his back turned to us.