“What upset your mother?” he asked when she was placing the covered dish before him.

“Oh, one thing and another.”

“You haven’t been nagging, have you?”

She moved round the table and stood regarding him with eyes he was sure were green. She lifted her full breasts and lightly placed her hands against her hips, and he knew that to be a wanton a woman needed no training.

“A girl never nags, Mr Martyr, until she’s married.”

“I believe you, Joan. Go away, and don’t annoy your mother.”

“Well, she started it.”

“Started what?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said, and walked from the room rippling her bottom like a Kanaka woman.

Martyr proceeded with his breakfast, which had to be completed at a quarter after seven. Mother and daughter were constantly warring about nothing which came to the surface for men to see. As cook and housemaid they formed a team the like of which Lake Otway had never known. The food was excellently prepared and the house managed expertly. The main cause of contention between these women, Martyr shrewdly guessed, was their closeness in age, for the mother was still young, still vitally attractive, retaining that something of wantonness she had bequeathed to the girl. The husband? No one knew anything of the husband.

Martyr recalled Lake Otway on his accepting the appointment. The Lake was dry then, and the domestic staff comprised a man cook and the lubra wife of one of the hands. The house was merely a place to sleep in; these two quarrelling women gave it life.

When he was entering the office the telephone rang twice. The call would be for George Barby, who cooked for stockmen at Sandy Well, midway between the main homestead and the out-station. Martyr seated himself at the desk and filled a pipe, and had applied a match when the telephone rang thrice… the Lake call. He counted ten before taking up the instrument.