n't, he hasn't the pluck," mocked Brown.

"No Bruce is afraid," said Betty, using her favourite taunt. "Come on
Cyril!"

But when she looked over her shoulder Cyril was nowhere in sight, and
Nancy was scudding away, like a terrified rabbit, through the scrub
around her.

Through the air rang a clear shrill voice--it belonged to golden haired
Dorothea--"Betty, come home."

"You're called," said Brown, winding up a yard or so of his line.

Betty stooped, grasped another stone, took aim at a distant wattle in
sheer desperation, and caught Brown on the hand.

The pain of it drew a sharp exclamation from him, and brought him from
his post in a towering rage.

And Betty took to her bare heels and ran--ran as though her grandfather
and all his emus were after her.

Near the wicket-gate she ran against Cyril, who was throwing stones in
the air for the dog to snap at as they fell.

"Bwoun!" she gasped. "He's coming!"

Cyril looked down the track and beheld no one.

"It's all right," he said; "go inside and shut the gate. I'll give him
what for. I'd just like to see him touch you. I'd knock him into next
year as soon as look at him."

But no Brown appeared.

Cyril put his hands in his pockets and strutted towards the track
through the bush--to the intense admiration of Elizabeth.

"No Bruce is afraid of any one," he said. "You and Nancy go in."

A girl in a short long print dress ran down the verandah steps. A mane
of golden hair hung down her back and some of it lay over her shoulders,
and when she stood still she tossed it away.

"You're to come home at once, Betty," she said, "and mind baby. And oh,
you naughty girl, you've got your boots and stockings off again. What
_will_ mother say?"

CHAPTER III

"THE DAILY ROUND--THE COMMON TASK"

Betty's boots and stockings were on once more, and her school frock
exchanged for one whose school days lay far behind it. In spite of
"lettings down" and repeated patchings and mendings it was in what its
small wearer called the "ragetty tagetty" stage of its existence, and
was donned only when she was about the dirty part of "cleaning up."

It was Saturday morning now, and she was very busy. Her mother could
never capably wield a broom, or scrub, or dust, or cook--she had done
all four, but the results were pathetic. Even Nancy knew the story of
her life, which began with "once upon a time, almost twenty years ago,"
and was told in varying fragments whenever