The Sin of Silence

MRS THORNTON was a small woman whose fragility of figure was somewhat deceptive. Her age was forty-three, and, although it is not generally politic to state a woman’s precise age, it has here to be done to prove that hardship, constant battling against odds, and self-denial, do not necessarily impair the bloom and vigour of youth. Vitality, both physical and mental, radiated from her plain yet delicately-moulded features.

On the morning following the visit of William Clair to the blacks’ camp she sat sewing on the wide veranda of the Barrakee homestead. The weather was warm, Nature drowsed in the shade, and the only sound came from the big steam-engine operating the pumps.

Now and then Mrs Thornton glanced between the leaves of the morning glory creeper shading the veranda to observe a tall, blue-shirted man digging the earth above the roots of the orange-trees beyond the lawn. Which of the men it was she could not make out, and uncertainty made her irritable.

At the sound of a heavy iron triangle being beaten by the men’s cook, announcing the morning lunch, the worker disappeared. For a moment the mistress of Barrakee allowed the sewing to fall to her lap, and a look of balked remembrance to cloud her brown eyes.

A moment later the house gong was struck, and the little woman went on with her task with a sigh. Came then the sound of ponderous steps on the veranda boards, and round an angle of the house there appeared, carrying a tray, an enormously fat aboriginal woman. Like a tank going into action the gin rolled towards Mrs Thornton, near whom she placed the tray of tea-things on a small table.