An Australian Girl. Catherine Martin
gravely.
'Really!' said Stella, smiling at the sombre tone of conviction in which he spoke. 'Well, give me my own shoe, Ted. No—I can put it on.'
Ritchie half reluctantly returned the pretty little bronze shoe with its silver buckle and dainty bow, and then took up the aboriginal one.
'Now, do you know what this is called, and what it is used for?' he said, holding it at full length on his outspread palm.
'No; but I am dying to know, for I never before heard that any of our blacks made any attempt at shoeing themselves. Could they walk far in a thing of that kind?'
'Far enough for their purposes, I dare say,' returned Ritchie grimly. 'That is a Kooditcha shoe, and a black fellow never puts a pair of them on except when he steals at night upon an enemy to kill him.'
'Oh, Ted, are you making that up to give me what you call a "curly half-hour"?'
'Oh, but you've not heard all yet. Do you see that reddish stuff holding the feathers together? Well, that is human blood.'
'How horrible! I wish I had not put it on,' said the girl, with a little shiver. 'It really has an assassin-like look, and such strange sombre tints.'
'You see, it would make no more track than a butterfly, and nothing to show it was on a foot. The blacks say they can track anything that walks or crawls, from a horse to a young snake; but not a ghost or an enemy in Kooditcha shoes.'
'Well, of all the myths I have gathered about the blacks, none are so dramatic as this relic. Thank you so much for getting it for me.'
'Well, I'm glad you like it. I wouldn't touch the thing with a pair of tongs, for my own part.'
'Human blood and a woman's hair! I wonder if anyone ever wore this to creep up to a tribal foe at midnight? But why did you say it was unlucky to put it on?'
'Well, the blacks say if you put one on and don't kill anybody, you'll live to wish someone had killed you.'
'Clearly the only thing for me to do is to kill someone. Who shall it be?' asked Stella, with mock gravity.
'Well, I'd offer myself, but you did for me long ago.'
'Why, Ted, you are getting quite epigrammatic.'
'Oh, I can't make a stew of my heart and put it into a letter, like some fellows. But look here, Stella. Ah, here comes Cuthbert. By Jove! he looks almost like a Bishop already.'
The newcomer, Cuthbert Lionel Courtland, was three years older than his sister. He was a young clergyman, with perhaps something of the ultra-gravity of demeanour that may sometimes be observable in those that have recently entered on the sacred calling. He had the finely-developed brow that was a characteristic of the Courtland family, dark gray eyes, something like Stella's in expression, and a beautifully-chiselled mouth, that helped largely to convey the calm, sunny expression which marked his face.
The two young men greeted each other as old acquaintances.
'You're a full-blown parson, Courtland, since I last saw you; I suppose I ought to congratulate you, but——'
'But you're not quite sure, Ritchie? Well, I'll take the half-will for the deed.'
'The fact is, I never know what to say before a parson; and though we've been kiddies together, I don't believe I can forget after this you belong to the cloth. The white choker and that makes you look, somehow, as if you had belonged to the clergy all your life.'
'Well, shall I put a spotted necktie on, Ted—for old acquaintance' sake?' laughed the young clergyman.
'Oh, I'm just going, thank you. Stella has been blowing me up for not being with my parents. There's a little filly I've had sent to my father's for you to ride, Stella. May I come and take you out on Tuesday morning?'
Stella hesitated, and then consented to the arrangement. The brother and sister accompanied their guest to the house, where he made his adieus to the rest of the family. He then mounted his horse and rode away.
CHAPTER II.
The brother and sister returned to the arcade. Cuthbert was the first to speak.
'Stella, there is a question I want to ask, and I'm almost afraid to put it.'
The girl looked up quickly, and then a smile slowly crept over her face.
'Dear darling boy, don't be afraid to ask me questions—as if they were lighted matches that might fall into gunpowder.'
'Has anything special passed between you and Ritchie?'
'Yes.'
'Have you accepted him?'
'No.'
'Then why do you go out riding with him on Tuesday?'
'Because I haven't accepted him.'
'Stella dear, don't trifle about this. Is it fair to him?'
'I think it's not only fair, but generous. He asks me to marry him. I cannot make up my mind to do so at present. In the meantime, I bind up his wounded spirit with the balm of friendship.'
'Yes, that's it. You refuse him time after time——'
'Not invariably. Do not blame me too severely. You see, I have tried all the recognised modes of treating a lover. I have refused him and accepted him, and sometimes done neither. When he has asked me for a stone I give him bread—the nourishment of occasional social intercourse instead of the terrible disillusion of marriage.'
'All this may be very well from a comedy point of view. But remember, it is not for the amusement of a passing hour that a man persists in asking a woman to be his wife year after year.'
'No. But still, dear, remember how much more amusing it is than if she had married him the first time of asking.'
'But now let me ask you seriously, what is to be the end of it all? I cannot understand you in the least, Stella, in this matter. To begin with, it is a mystery to me that you should find pleasure in Ted's society, and yet I believe you do.'
'Ah, Cuth, you haven't heard Ted give an account of the Bible Patriarchs'—and the girl burst into a peal of laughter so infectiously merry that her brother was forced to smile. 'As for asking what is to be the end of it all, why, that is a question we keep on asking as long as people live, and, most of all, when they die.'
'Yet people must decide something in a rough and ready fashion. You have allowed yourself to drift into a very undesirable position. You refuse to marry Ritchie—and there I, at least, feel you are right. But I think you are wrong to go out riding with him, for it gives him hope that in the end you may change your mind.'
'And so I may. If I could only be sure that he would be always as amusing as he was to-day——'
'Well, I suppose sex must count for something when a certain friendship has subsisted since childhood between a young man and woman. I must say that to me the chief quality of Ritchie's conversation is a careless—well, perhaps graphic—commonness of speech.'
'There is more than that. There is a direct appeal to life as it presents itself to him; and when we have all tacitly agreed to blink so much, the trait has a certain fascination—at least to me.'
'I could understand that so much better if Ted's point of view were not essentially that of the average sensual man. Pardon me, dear, if I say anything that vexes you.'
'You must not forget that I have never been in love with Ted.'
'Well, that troubles me sometimes more than if you were.'
'Isn't that just slightly contradictory?'
'Perhaps it may be; but what I