was so red and fidgety and uncomfortable. The woman said: "Tch, tch,
tch!" at the length of the journey Laura was undertaking, and Peter,
growing still redder, volunteered another remark.

"I was nigh to bein' in Melb'm once meself," he said.

"Aye, and he can't never forget it, the silly loon," threw in the woman,
but so good-naturedly that it was impossible, Laura felt, for Peter to
take offence.

She gazed at the pair, speculating upon the relation they stood
in to each other. She had obediently put out her hand for the apple, and
now sat holding it, without attempting to eat it. It had not been
Mother's precepts alone that had weighed with her in declining it; she
was mortified at the idea of being bribed, as it were, to be good, just
as though she were Pin or one of the little boys. It was a punishment on
her for having been so babyish as to cry; had she not been caught in the
act, the woman would never have ventured to be so familiar.--The very
largeness and rosiness of the fruit made it hateful to her, and she
turned over in her mind how she could get rid of it.

As the coach bumped along, her fellow-passengers sat back and shut their
eyes. The road was shadeless; beneath the horses' feet a thick red dust
rose like smoke. The grass by the wayside, under the scattered gum trees
or round the big black boulders that dotted the hillocks, was burnt to
straw. In time, Laura also grew drowsy, and she was just falling into a
doze when, with a jerk, the coach pulled up at the "Halfway House." Here
her companions alighted, and there were more nods and smiles from the
woman.