ake Loose End's run of bad luck
change, he would share the good when it came. They accepted his offer
without discussion. Then he asked if they would live at the Homestead or
in a shepherd's hut about half a mile away, near the lake.

"It's not a bad little place. I had two shepherds before the sheep got
drowned. Then it was no use them staying. I don't think there's much in
the way of furniture--"

They looked at each other. In each other's eyes they saw a plea to be
alone together in their new world, and said, in a breath, that they
would live in the hut.

"Oh kid, I'm so glad," said Mrs. Twist when the men went off to see what
damage the dust-storm had done. Marcella was extraordinarily happy as
she was taught what to do in the Homestead.

CHAPTER XXIII

The hut was on the edge of a great patch of gorse that Mr. Twist said
stretched for twenty acres or more, right to the limit of his holding.
It was giant gorse, quite unlike the mild edition of it found in
England. In many places it towered above the hut and the stems were
almost as thick as tree-trunks, while the spines played havoc with
clothes and skin. It was burnt dry now, by the sun. In the cooler
weather, Mr. Twist said, the whole place was a golden blaze of bloom.

The cottage consisted of three rooms, built on the same plan as the
Homestead. The middle room was a sort of kitchen. There was a big table
and a bench of planed wood.

"There isn't a grate," said Mr. Twist, "they got their rations up at the
house, you see." The absence of a fire-place did not trouble Marcella.
She had often cooked on Wullie's open fire at Lashnagar, and Louis
quickly explained that he would make a bush oven outside. Neither of the
rooms leaning against the kitchen had any furniture, but Mrs. Twist
seemed to have laid in a whole ship's stores of navy hammocks, which she
said they could have until Louis had carpentered bed for them. There
were hundreds of very fat, furry spiders who crawled about solemnly and
fell with heavy bodies down swift silken threads as Marcella opened the
door of the bedroom.

For the next few days they certainly did not earn their wages. They were
like two children with a new doll's house, and at the end of the week
the hut was unrecognizable. Louis, unskilfully busy with saw, hammer and
nails put up a shelf for the box of books they were going to get from
Mrs. King's as soon as someone went into Cook's Well to take a letter.
Marcella wish